Among the earliest additions were my Escort Passport 8500X50 radar detector (purely for safety reasons of course) and a dash camera. Both have power wires running on top of the headliner, down the right pillar cover, through the dash and into the fuse box in the passenger’s kick panel. The radar detector is is spliced directly into the fuse box using a Littelfuse FHA200BP ATO Add-A-Circuit and Escort direct wire SmartCord kit I bought off of Amazon. The dash cam I wired a Female Cigarette Lighter Outlet directly into the tap and just plugged its 12V male adapter into that, avoiding the need to cut the end off the power adapter. These mods are very commonly done by MINI Cooper drivers.
Having the radar detector up high maximizes the range while keeping it near by field of view. I can easily look at the display without taking my eyes off the road. It also makes it easier to hear being up there. If I need to mute it I have installed the included mute button to the right side of the center console right next to the gearshift. This allows me to easily hit the mute without even having to look. I did run into a problem as nothing would stick to the center console plastic, so I used industrial grade velcro. This worked well where even 3M commercial grade red tape would not. There is something weird about the plastic MINI Cooper uses on that console.
The dash camera records both video and audio for over five hours before overwriting data. This ensures that I always have the last five hours of travel saved. The 130 degree field of view is excellent for a front dash cam. To see what it records, check out the video on my Buster versus the Three Twisted Sisters page where I ran the route with a bunch of other MINI Coopers.
