Ain’t nothing worse than driving around with a mismatched interior. Well, to me anyway.

Couple of years back I chanced upon some tidy interior trim and seats out of a BFMR Familia which some guy had decided to convert into a rally car some time ago, and said interior was subsequently stored away for safekeeping/reinstalling one day. As it so happened, the rally car was written off and the trim sat in his garage for a few more years until one day he decided to move house and found it all under a sheet while getting ready to shift things. It also turned out to be the ultra-rare “wind-up window door card” version, so I pretty much bought it all on the spot.

there was one slight problem though: no front seats. “Not a problem,” I thought to myself, “I’ll soon be able to find a decent pair on Trademe…”

That was four years ago, and I’ve been looking for those elusive front seats ever since… until this week, when I finally tracked down a pair via the AMAZD club. Cheers Dee (and Ross)

as a stop-gap solution I’d purchased a pair of BFMP Familia bucket seats, which are identical in design save for the trim pattern and the way they mount to the rails (they’re for a FWD chassis, and mine is 4WD). The big drawback of the latter is that the driver’s seat ends up on a massive lean, and no amount of spacing will actually balance it out completely.

this is actually my 2nd pair – the first pair were even shabbier.

TX3 seat swap (by decypher the code)

BFMP seats

and to someone with slight OCD tendencies (like me), the difference in trim pattern was enough to be an annoyance.

BFMP seat pattern (by decypher the code) BFMR seat pattern (by decypher the code)

BFMP = black and grey squares, BFMR = black and grey lines.

After fitting my rails to the new seats followed by a quick vacuum and scrub down with some upholstery cleaner, in they went, and much rejoicing was to be had.

TX3 seat swap (by decypher the code)

BFMR seats in, and no more lean!

Ain’t it nice when things match up?

TX3 seat swap (by decypher the code)

Seats match doorcards. Stoked.

So with that out of the way – and if you’ve been following my earlier sporadic updates on this car – there remains one final thing left to be done until the project is complete, and that’s to buy some Cusco adjustable front strut tops. Shouldn’t be too hard a task for Ewan @ hayatonka!

1 Comment

  • KK-Kolonel says:

    You should do a build fred on the forum – I like these concours restorations no matter what sort of car it is.. a read of the TX3 buildup should be choice!!

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