Wood Grain inserts

From what I've seen, you can retrofit wood console pieces into your car, but at a huge cost. The wood pieces themselves are over $1000 each and you have to get different door/lower dash panels to accept the wood trim. Center console is just a simple swap, I think. Don't know about where to find the parts, but I read recently that Gault BMW helped out someone else do this exact thing. Good luck. It looks great, but I'm not sure whether it would be worth the outflow of cash.

Paul

Forgot to mention that you could go the thin wood veneer glue ons that are sold that go right over your existing console pieces. I've heard mixed reviews on that stuff. Not sure I'd like the look. I think you would be able to tell that you've just stuck some wood bits on top of what you already have.

Paul

Check out the post titled "Now I Can Die Happy" on roadfly

http://bimmer.roadfly.com/bmw/forums/e31/

That is the post I was referring to. It has pictures of the conversion to Csi wood trim and some good info on the process.

Paul

Hello,

I think that it was only the Alpina and certain USA models that were offered with the wood trim around the gear stick/selector and some of these cars also had wood trim in place of the lower leather trim around the bottom of the dash and lower parts of the doors.

However, if you consider that on many new cars, including BMW, polished wood is now replaced by carbon-fibre effect trim or aluminium, it's quite interesting that in this respect, the 8-series was ahead of its time, being designed with no wood.

In my oppinion, adding the wood - particularly the bright finishes- makes it look a bit outdated and tacky, especially as it does not feature anywhere else on the car.

Having said that, if you can find something in black birds-eye maple or a similar dark wood, it could blend in quite well with a black or grey dashboard and look relatively modern.

As far as fitting, there may be a difference between the manual and automatic gear versions, but otherwise the trims should be all universal fit.

I think your best bet would be to contact Dave or Al at Gault BMW. Do a google search for the web adress and give them a call. they are great at finding anything for our cars, and you will get a discount if you mention the club. I know that several have done carbon fiber, but I'm pretty sure those are custom made pieces. There have been some posts of companies that will take your existing console pieces and apply the carbon fiber treatment directly to them, then you refit these pieces back on. Search the archives on roadfly and you are bound to come up with lots of information. If you don't know about that site, go to roadfly.com, go to the BMW forums, choose the e31 forum, go to search up near the top and then type in whatever you are searching for. Lots of great info there.

Good luck on your quest.

Paul