One thing that always perplexed me is why BMW never put a place to store your sunglasses. There is an oddly shaped indentation under the folding armrest, but it’s not easily accessible or glasses friendly. After having one too many close calls with my fiancée sitting on them, I decided to spring into action. One option replaces the “oh shit!” handle with a glasses holder, but this wasn’t always easy to reach and a little awkward. The second option is the OEM BMW tray which can be bought for under $20.
There’s already a good write-up on center console removal here:
https://www.1addicts.com/forums/showthread.php?t=213833
It’s pretty spot-on, although I found that I didn’t need to remove the trim under the steering wheel or glove box to remove the center console. You’ll find that you probably do need to partially remove one side to get it back in though. Everything is pretty straight forward and I think it took me about two hours. The toughest part was removing the plug for the aux input. I must have struggled with it for 10 minutes. I’m still not even sure how it was clipped in there so tightly.
Here are the before and after shots.
