MARSHSEIS "Classic Mini Challenge" Creating a Time Machine.

Objective-13 Is everyone comfortably seated?. Yes? ... Then I'll Begin!

As the title suggests, todays blog is going to concentrate on how we managed to shoehorn the modern mini interior, most notably the seats into the classic Mini shell yet maintain such features as driver ergonomics, passenger comfort and overall interior appeal and apparel as is evident and available in the modern MINI Cooper.

Dare I say it, we actually ended up with more or less the same amount of available space in the front seats for both driver and front seat passenger, as is available in the modern MINI and for the rear passengers, actually ended with more leg room, and all retained in a cozy yet comfortable arrangement surrounded by classic and Oh! so British styling.

We're once again very pleased with this result.

The above picture shows the extent we had to go too, in modifying the floor arrangement in the classic Mini shell. This in an effort to produce a foundation that would allow us to include all the modern MINI bits, keeping them suitably spaced, and retaining all the necessary modern features and safety equipment. Just as importantly to keep everything looking classic and as if it had been designed and made to fit in the classic car. As I've mentioned before, the measurement and accuracy of fabrication for this installation had to be millimetre perfect to allow us to do this. To achieve our goal we did incorporate some adjustability, especially for height into some of the installation.

That's the first seat in and as can be seen we did have to reduce the height of the floor pan cross member and rake its cross section profile. The modern MINI seats have considerably more in the way of trappings situated beneath the seat and we had to allow for these too in our fit solution. All features including height, front/back adjustment, tilt for rear passenger access, heated seat cushions, seat belt installation and head rests....All have been retained.

First glimpse of the driving experience our car will present and all in all, we are pleased with and believe we have more than achieved one of our primary and most important objectives...but wait! "What about the rear passengers"? I hear you ask. "That arrangement has got to be eating into the rear passenger comfort zone". Well stand-by to be AMAZED!

Hang on a minute...."That's the old mini rear seat I hear you comment" and of course you're correct, but we fitted these to begin with just to get the feel of what would work best. All new interior or a mix and match of old and new. Well we ended up deciding that the old style rear seats would work for now to give visual reference to the ever evolving interior. We will hold off on a decision on the modern MINI rear seats until we get a little more of the rear passenger compartment and boot installations into place to assess if the modern MINI rear seats can be squeezed in, so keep on watching to see how we get on with that, where we may once again have to apply a copious measure of Marshseis magic. :-)

That's about all for this blog....All the best and take care and be sure to keep an eye out for our next blogs where you'll find out exactly how we got on with "Creating a Time Machine".