Oxford, England - BMW has added a new dimension (if you’ll pardon the pun) to the almost limitless range of options available for the Mini with the Your Customised range of upgrade parts, individually designed by you, the customer, and made using 3D printing and laser lettering.
The Your Customised programme will be rolled out during 2018, and will initially indicator inlays (side scuttles in BMWspeak) passenger side dashboard trims, LED door sills and LED door projectors.
You order the parts from the Customiser at a specially developed new online shop; the parts are then made for you in your chosen design and colour, and shipped to you, for fitting by you or your friendly local BMW dealer.
You can choose from a wide range of colours, patterns, surface finishes and icons, including your own text or even your signature; once the design has been finalised and saved, it gets transferred electronically to the workshop where the parts are made, exactly as you designed them. And you can do this more than once, so if you change your mind, or sell the car, you can simply clip in new trims, or replace the originals.
The side scuttles can be made with colours, surface finishes and patterns in any sequence - and you can scale the finish and patterns up and down to create the look you want. Then you can select from a catalogue of icons, also scalable, taken from contexts such as travel, leisure activities or Mini history, and finally, fill in, scale and place in position a text field that can say anything you want, including the name of the driver, the passenger - or the car!
The side scuttles come in pairs - but they don’t have to be the same, so you can have your name on the drivers side and your partner’s on the passenger side - and they’re available in your choice of black, white, red and two shades of matt silver, for current Mini three and five-door hatches and convertible models.
There’s a similar range of possibilities for the passengers side dashboard trim, with a huge selection of surface finishes, graphic patterns and icons, as well as a text field - which could even be your signature! - all movable and scalable. The final design is then 3D printed in your choice of red, white, blue, grey or black.
The anodised-aluminium (black or natural silver) Yours Customised door sills come with a choice of several scalable patterns and finishes, including a range of icons and a text field, engraved using laser technology.
They come in sets of two (for three-door or convertible Minis) or four (for the five-door hatch) but each one can be different. They’re held in place by adhesive patches and front door trims have LED backlighting (no wiring necessary, they’re powered by button batteries, and two spare batteries are included), switch on and off as the doors open and close by magnetic switches.
Finally, the bespoke LED door projectors can be fitted to any Mini that already has either door projectors or entry lights, to illuminate the ground next to the car when the door is opened. If your Mini has door projectors, all you have to do is pull out the original slide and replace it with your personal slide (and they don’t have to be the same!) incorporating your custom design against a choice of background patterns, in white combined with red, blue or black.
If your Mini has entry lights, then the kit will include the projectors, which replace the entry lights in a few simple steps.