Hundreds Of Products Ready Today. Dispatch/Collection How to get the Clubsport look in your BMW M2
The M2 gets asked about more than almost anything else on the BMW side of the counter, and it is nearly always the same conversation. The car is standard, it has done a few track days, and the driver has spent the whole session hanging onto the wheel to stop sliding about. Nothing is wrong with the car. The seats are just doing what road seats do.
The Clubsport look is the answer most people land on. Bucket seats, harnesses, a rear half cage and a tidied-up back seat area, done in a way that still works on the road. It borrows from BMW’s own harder-edged cars without turning the M2 into something you have to think twice about before driving to work.
The F87 suits this better than most cars we see. It is a small coupe with a short cabin, so a compact shell drops in and clears the door card and the B pillar. The standard seats are big and heavy, and once they come out you get room back that you did not know the car had.
What matters is that the parts are chosen as a set. The seat has to suit the frame, the frame has to suit the floor, and the cage has to leave room for whatever you put behind it. Get one of those wrong and you end up with a car that looks right in photographs and is annoying to live with. Cameron spends a fair bit of his week working out those combinations, so this page runs in the order we would actually do the job.
Why the Clubsport look works on this car
Part of it is BMW’s own doing. The CS and GTS cars showed that a road interior could be stripped back and still feel expensive, and a lot of M2 owners want that without paying CS money. Copying it with the right parts reads as deliberate. Copying it with whatever fits reads as a parts bin.
The bigger reason is that it fixes a real problem. The standard M2 seat is comfortable and holds you fine on the road, but it is a road seat with a reclining back and a lot of foam. Push the car and you move in it. Once you are held properly by a bucket and a harness, you stop bracing against the door and the steering inputs get smaller and tidier. That is the bit people notice first, and it has nothing to do with how it looks.
It also scales. You can stop after seats and frames and have a car that is better to drive and barely changed to look at. Or you can carry on through harnesses, a half cage and a rear seat delete and end up somewhere close to a track car. Most people we deal with do it in that order, over a couple of years, which is a sensible way to spend the money.
Garreth’s view on the whole thing is that the seats and frames are worth doing on any M2 that gets used properly. Everything after that is about how far you want to take the car.
Recaro Pole Position seats
The Pole Position is the seat that does most of the work here. It turns up in more OEM plus builds than anything else we sell, and in an M2 the reason is mostly size. The shell is narrow and short, so it drops into a two door coupe cabin without fighting the door card or sitting you up near the headlining.
The bolstering is the other half of it. It holds you through a corner without being so aggressive that climbing out at a petrol station becomes a job. We have sold plenty of harder shells to people who came back six months later wanting something they could actually live with, so this is worth being honest about before you order.
Trim makes more difference to the finished car than most people expect. The Ambla leather and suede is the one that blends into an M2 cabin, because the materials are close to what BMW already used in there. A full fabric seat is a perfectly good seat and looks like an aftermarket part the moment you open the door.
- Compact fibreglass shell, which is what makes it fit
- Bolstering aimed at road use as much as track
- Harness slots for a 4 or 6 point belt
- Ambla leather and suede, velour or FIA trim options
- ABE approved version available for road use
-
From £866.25 Excl. VAT Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page
Seat dimensions and who fits in one
The Pole Position is a compact seat, which is why it goes into a car like the M2 without clearance problems.
- Height: approx. 880 mm
- Base width: approx. 390 mm
- Seat depth: approx. 495 mm
The ABE version is not the same shell as the standard one. It flares out more at the hips, which makes it usable for a much wider range of drivers. We generally point people between a 30 and 36 inch waist at that one. It still holds you, it just does not pinch after an hour.
If you are outside that range, say so before you order. There is a full range of bucket seats here and the shells are not all the same width. Cameron will usually ask for a waist measurement and your height, and there is normally a shell that suits better than this one. Guessing is how seats come back.
Got a question about the equipment we sell?
Why Choose Garreth And Cameron At GSM Performance?
Key points from this guide
- The Clubsport look on an M2 is a set of parts, not one purchase
- Recaro Pole Position suits the F87 because the shell is compact
- The ABE version suits roughly a 30 to 36 inch waist
- The PCI F87 kit comes complete with frame, runners and side mounts
- It is priced per seat, so a pair needs two
- Bolt in half cages fit the F87 without welding or cutting
- The rear seat delete is an easier decision on an M2 than on a saloon
- Half cages here are about the look and a bit of stiffness, not a race licence
PCI Racing BMW F87 sliding sub frame
The frame is the part people get wrong, and it is the part that decides whether the whole job feels right. PCI make an F87 specific sliding sub frame, so it picks up the M2’s own floor mounting points and the seat lands where it should.
The sliding runners are why we point road cars at this frame. You keep the fore and aft adjustment you had with the standard seat, which matters if the car gets shared or if you are tall enough to need the last inch. A fixed mount is lighter and sits you lower, and it is a nuisance in a car that is also used on a Tuesday morning.
The best thing about the PCI kit is that it arrives complete. Base frame, sliding runners and the side mounts all come in the one box, made to work together and already the right heights. That is the bit worth paying for. Plenty of brackets on the market are a base plate and nothing else, so you buy the side mounts separately and find out afterwards whether the seat ends up where you wanted it.
Pricing on the frame is per seat, so a pair of seats needs two kits. Tell us which side each one is for when you order and we will send the right handing.
- Complete kit: base frame, sliding runners and side mounts
- Made specifically for the F87 M2 floor
- Keeps sliding fore and aft adjustment
- Steel construction
- Driver or passenger side, chosen at checkout
- Priced per seat, order two for a pair
-
From £275.00 Excl. VAT Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page
Schroth 4 point harnesses
Harnesses change how the car feels more than they change how it looks, though they do plenty of both. A 4 point Schroth is the sensible starting point on an M2 that still spends most of its life on the road.
Paired with the Pole Position, the belts do the job the seat cannot do on its own. The shell stops you sliding sideways and the harness stops you moving forward and up, so under braking you stay put and your arms are free to steer. On a road drive you barely notice it. On the third lap of a track day you notice it a lot.
The Clubman II ASM is the one we sell most of for this kind of build. It is a road oriented belt, which is what makes it a reasonable thing to have in a car you drive normally.
Think about the fitting at the same time as the cage. The shoulder straps need something to run to, and the half cage rear bar is the usual answer. If you are buying both, buy them together and we will check the geometry works before anything ships.
- 4 point layout, road and light track use
- Works with the Pole Position harness slots
- FIA approved, with Schroth ASM
- Shoulder straps mount to a rear cage bar
Rear half roll cage
The cage is the part that changes the car. Everything up to this point improves how the M2 drives and leaves the cabin looking broadly standard. Open the door on a car with a rear half cage in it and you can see straight away what has been done.
Both of the F87 cages we sell most of are bolt in. They mount on spreader plates through the floor and the existing structure, so nothing is welded and nothing is cut. That matters on an M2 more than on an old shell, because these are still valuable cars and a bolt in cage can come back out if you sell it on standard.
The SW Motorsports half cage is the straightforward one and the one most people take. The JP cage is the more involved shape, with a tube layout closer to the factory motorsport look. Both are CDS tube and both are cut and bent for this shell, which is what keeps fitting time down.
Being straight about what this is for: a rear half cage in a road M2 is chosen for the look, for a bit of shell stiffness, and to give the harnesses something proper to mount to. If you need a cage signed off for a championship, tell us what you run in first and we will point you at the right full cage instead, because the regulations decide that one, not us.
- Bolt in, no welding and no cutting
- Cut and bent for the F22 and F87 shell
- CDS tube
- Gives the rear harness straps a proper mounting point
- Removable if the car is sold on standard
-
From £846.87 Excl. VAT Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page
-
From £568.33 Excl. VAT Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page
Rear seat delete kit
Take the rear seats out of an M2 and you are left with a hole. Bare metal, wiring, seat belt stalks and a floor that was never meant to be looked at. The delete kit is what turns that into something finished.
This is an easier decision on an M2 than on almost anything else. The back seats in an F87 are small enough that most owners have already stopped using them, so you are not really giving anything up. On a saloon it is a genuine trade off. On this car it is mostly admitting what the back seats were already for.
The panels drop into the standard mounting positions and sit flush, so it reads as a finished job. Fitted alongside the half cage it also gives the tubes something clean to sit against, which is where most of the visual payoff comes from.
There is a weight saving too. It is real but it is modest, and if that is the only reason you are doing it then the money is better spent elsewhere first.
- Shaped panels for the F87 rear
- Uses the standard mounting positions
- Designed to sit alongside a rear cage
- Covers the bare floor, wiring and belt mounts
Final thoughts on an OEM plus M2 build
Done in this order the car never has an awkward stage. Seats and frames on their own make the M2 better to drive. Harnesses make sense once the seats are in. The cage and the seat delete are the two that change how it looks, and they are the two worth doing last, once you know how you actually use the car.
What stops it looking like a collection of aftermarket parts is that every piece was made for this shell. That is most of the job.
If you are working out a combination for your own M2, send us the car and what you are trying to do with it and we will spec it properly. If you are anywhere near us, bring the car and we will sit you in a shell before you spend anything. Ask for Cameron on the fitment and Garreth if you want a straight answer on what is worth the money.