E53 Seat interchangeability FYI

[e39_touring]

Just posting this up for those in the future contemplating swapping seats. They are not all interchangeable!

Never seen this posted before, but this is what I've learned so far from swapping a set of seats between an '01 and '05 X5 3.0.

Front seats: seats bolt in and interchange fine, the electrical connector is plug and play. However, the seat belt receptacles are not interchangeable - early seat belt buckles will not fit in the later seat's receptacle.

Rear seats: the brackets are different on the late cars, the outermost brackets (closest to the door) have two torx bolts each versus one on the early cars. The rear bolt is hidden under the luggage compartment trim and a little tough to get at but still doable without removing that trim. The seats drop in fine, but the little 'hoops' that latch the backrests on the later cars are longer and don't work with the early X's seats. The later seats work fine with the early X's latches.

This is not an LCI/pre-LCI thing but just running changes made during the production run.