Figured I'd share my installation with you folks. Learned quite a bit about the add-a-fuse and which fuse to use from the forum - thanks for that!
When I found my 2008 Clubman (1 year old when I bought it) and saw the piano black trim, I knew I didn't want my TomTom 720 in it with its matte grey housing. Nice enough GPS with voice recognition etc. (which is VERY handy) but just wouldn't look nice in the Clubman. Also I knew I didn't want it on the windshield. That was fine for my Honda Civic, but not my MINI
I ultimately plan on ordering a GOMINIGO mount to hang it to the left of the tach, which is my preferred location. However, I found a very nice spot to mount the GPS in the meantime, which is really pretty factory-looking.
I don't think any other GPS would fit quite as well in this spot. The Garmin is just thin enough (depth), just narrow enough (1/8" on either side) and just tall enough to fit here, and the stock windshield mount is just the right size. I used the supplied adhesive flat disk right at the back of the little storage area in front of the cupholders, and then mounted the suction cup mount to it. Very solid.
I have the USB / AUX in port on mine, which restricts the space in this area. Without that, a larger GPS would probably fit.
For now I'm using fuse 21, with the Mini Add-A-Fuse by Littelfuse. For those Canadians looking for this (we can't order from Amazon) they are available from Canadian Tire but are $15 each
But that's the price of convenience I guess.
I fed the Garmin's car adaptor in from the passenger footwell. Took off the trim plate by the throttle pedal (2 torx screws) which allowed me to easily feed the power supply up and into the storage box in front of the cup holders. I made sure there was a good 12" of cable in there so I could pull the GPS out easily when I wanted.
There is a clear path between the footwells once you take the trim cover off. I then put a 2-outlet 12v cigarette adaptor in the upper left corner of the passenger footwell. The thick black carpet is not cemented down at the top edge in the footwell, so I tucked the adaptor in under the carpet. It is stiff enough to hold it in place. The power wire then threads along under this carpet and right into the fuse box area, completely hidden.
HINT - leave your ground wire (the one without the white stripe in my case) extra long so you can find a nice place to ground. I didn't. But, I did find a nice ground in the fuse panel area - upper left corner there is a bare metal plate with a white pliable plug holding the panel trim on. I stripped off a 1-2" long section of insulation from the ground and tucked it under the white plug material against the metal plate. Well grounded and no soldering/screws etc. Might try something more solid in the future.
The add-a-fuse goes on easily and plugs into spot 21 on the fuse panel. This circuit activates when you unlock the car etc. and shuts down a while after you lock the car up - like a good 30 minutes. I'd prefer something that shuts down instantly, but those all seem to be the larger ATO size fuses, and I only had the Mini size add-a-fuse. I also think there are clearance issues with the fuse panel cover when using these larger fuses.
Nice feature of the Garmin Nuvi 265w is it powers itself ON when the power turns on, and shuts itself OFF when power is turned off. So I never have to touch the power switch.
Here are some crappy phone camera pics - I'll take better ones later including the fuse panel area. When I go to move it to the tach-mount it should be simple to route the power supply cable along the steering column and down to the outlet in the footwell area.
