BMW E39 Garage Chair

I’ve had two BMW E39 front seats in the garage for a couple of years.   My brother wrote off his 1999 BMW 523i a couple of years back.   He was originally going to do something with the seats, but since moved interstate.     I’ve always thought that one of them would make a great garage chair.   The main downside is they are immensely heavy.   Even though these are manual seats and do not have motors, I was shocked at how heavy they really are – to the point that is is pretty awkward for one person to maneuver them.

The plan was to make something basic without having to resort to custom welding or fabrication.    I found a base from a dead office chair and some plywood from a shelving project at home.   My idea was to bolt the chair to the plywood and then the plywood to the office chair base.   Due to the sheer weight of the E39 seat, I used two pieces of plywood.

The centre of gravity of the chair is quite far back.  Using the plywood allows the base to be attached in a way that doesn’t have the seated person falling out of the chair.   The base and casters were probably not designed for this sort of weight, so I am not sure if this will result in future wheel failure.   Even if it does, it wouldn’t be too hard to remove this base and bolt and alternative one to the plywood.

Obviously I painted the plywood back to ensure that it didn’t look too bad.   A much nicer way would have been to weld up a proper frame.  Unfortunately, I don’t know how to weld and I was not going to pay for custom welding.

The resulting garage chair works pretty well – although it is slightly too high.    The E39 seats have really nice leather and this car had a very original interior.