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Corbeau A4 Seats in MINI

Looking for a supportive seat for autocross or HPDE, but still use your car as a daily driver? The Corbeau A4 might be a good option to consider. Available in cloth or leather, it has the option of a 5/6 point sub hole in the lower cushion that even works with optional seat heaters.

The A4 is narrower in the shoulders than many competitor seats so it fits in small spaces like the MINI without rubbing on the door panel. Keep in mind that if you still have carpet in your car, you’ll need to phish the power leads to the center console before you install the seats.

The seat brackets include sliders and a mounting point for the stock 3-point belt receptacle. One thing we did notice with these brackets, however, is that the stock mounting position is not centered on the steering wheel. To fix that, we drilled new holes about an inch closer to the inboard side and had the old holes welded closed. After we painted the bracket, you really couldn’t tell anything changed. As an added bonus, there is now an extra inch or so of space between the seat back and door panel, making it easier to grab the seatbelt.

The challenge for MINIs after 2005 is the passenger occupancy sensor, though you do have a couple of options. If you are skilled with NCSexpert, you may be able code it out in the ABG module. Just look for OC3_1 and OC3_2, and change to “nicht aktiv”. If you want to keep the occupancy sensor, you can remove it from an OEM seat and place it below the cushion on your A4 seat, which is what we did.

In this car, we installed optional seat heaters in addition to the 5/6 point sub slot. Since this car came with OEM seat heaters, wiring was very simple. Start by removing the stock switch panel. Remove the OEM heater switches. Use a drummer tool to remove the lip and slightly increase the size of the hole. Fit the switches provided by Corbeau. Now turn your attention to the stock wiring connector.

You’ll want to grab power and ground from this part of the wiring loom to take advantage of the stock fused power. Using the supplied power lead, trim off the in-line fuse and cut the black and red wires to about 12 inches. Connect the black wire to the brown ground wire in the loom. As you look at the stock connector, you’ll see a green/violet wire on one end, and a green/gray one on the other. The green/violet is the one going to the OEM seat so the one on the other end of the connector (color may be different) is the power lead from the loom. Verify it has power with key in position two and check with a volt-meter. Cut that wire close to the connector and attach to the red wire of the supplied lead. Now hide all of the wires within the center console. installation looks very OEM.