Mini Cooper seats in my 2010 Prerunner

I get asked about this one quite a bit. Why Mini Cooper seats? I had the stock seats for 4 years. Every time we took a long drive my wife ended the drive by telling me how seats hurt her back. (She's right. They are uncomfortable.) Then, "That doesn't happen in my Mini Cooper." What was I to do? When I finally decided to change the seats I found some very clean ones from a wrecked 2015 Mini. I stripped the Tacoma interior and installed new carpet, insulation, and weatherstripping. The seats are mounted on Planted brackets. I bought the lower bracket height but still had to turn them over to a fabrication shop to lower them further. (I was looking through the tinted band on top of the windshield at first.) Once installed, it took some work the clear all the airbag codes but I got there. The airbags will deploy if there's an accident. I left the side airbags in the seat nonfunctional. I couldn't find enough info on how they work to risk hooking the Mini seats to the Tacoma computer. Maybe some day.

 

Cool,
any pictures of the brackets that had to be modified?
I'm always on the hunt for a replacement seat, glad to see that you could get this done

 

I didn't think my Tacoma seats were that uncomfortable, though I wasn't a fan of the fabric. I do find my 4Runner seats more comfortable. I wonder if 4Runner seats would be more likely to just bolt in and be compatible with the airbag system.

 

Very nice. I have A set of Audi S5 seats in my Tacoma and Ended up at the same. One day I may look into getting the side airbags to work but the rest is good to go. Def nice to have 14 way power seats, lumbar and heated seats again. I also used planted brackets.

What did you lower? Overall bracket height? That is the one item I want to do is lower the seat a tad. Even when the seat is all the way down its 1" or so higher than stock. overall not bad but that would be a nice change.

Looks good!

 

Yes. The overall bracket height. It was tricky so I had a fabrication shop do it for me. I'm 6'2" and I'm the short one in the family. Too high was a problem.

 

I ran Honda CRX seats in my ‘84. They were great

 

Here is the site where I bought the bracket: https://www.plantedtechnology.com/products/seat-brackets/toyota.html?p=9

There is a high bracket and a low bracket. I bought the low one and still had to lower it more. Here's the bracket:

 

yah that makes sense. I considered that but for now, it was fine and figured later I may revisit it. But currently, I have a fuse block and radio under so it may work fine. Def if your tall you need to shorten so makes sense. When I had the seat flat no bracket it was a bit lower than stock height now its a tad taller. I wonder if they had a lowe rand taller one before I do not recall having a choice. I bet I have the taller one. unless the lower is the regular one.

For others that decide to do seats. A lot of factory seats are wider. If you see they sell a BMW kit which is essentially 2 cross flat bars. I added those to mine and bottled the seat to the bracket and cross bar.

 

Seats I retrofitted in the truck. I need to see if I have a picture of what I did on the brackets.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...dventures-and-bs.469415/page-18#post-25579502

 

Found one in case others need some ideas. I did not have access to a welder at the time, so drilled and bolted up after I cleaned them up and painted the cross bars. Similar to the BMW factory kit they sell (that's where I got the idea). Were you able to bolt direct or do something similar?

 

That's very similar to how mine were set up.

 

nicely done!

 

I didn't think my Tacoma seats were particularly uncomfortable either. My wife did though. So, I had a choice of changing the seats or driving her Mini on the longer trips. The Mini is fun to drive but it's a bit crowded for me. And now that I'm using the Mini seats, I'm glad she didn't like the Tacoma seats. It's much better now.

 

Those Audi Seats look so good in there. I thought about having an upholstery shop take my seats and add more bolstering and replace the bottom cushion with a memory or nicer foam

 

Yah it’s almost like they were made for the Tacoma. I got lucky browsing eBay one night and got them for a steal. 1/3 if what they usually go for. Front and rear. will sell the rest eventually or if I get adventurous I considered seeing how they would fit in the back