Were Projector headlights offered on a 1st gen R50?
 

I've been trying to find a pair of projector (xenon) headlights for a friend at local salvage yards. Most of the 1st gen arrivals to land the yards have been 2005 R50's which all seem to have the large halogen(?) flat style lowbeams,
This has had me wondering if the projector style xenons were even offered on the 1st gen (2005 & 2006) R50's.(?)
Can anyone shed some light on this? (no pun intended).

Thanks.

Yes. Believe it or not, there’s another BRG R50 in the deck I park in that has xenons.

2006 model year Price List shows Xenon available as a separate option at $550 per the attachment (included in the ZSP Pkg on S-Spec). VIN decoder on my lightly optioned 2006 R53 shows Xenon as option Code 522...

Thanks for both replies.
I received an alert from a metro P-A-P last week that a A 2005 R50 had just arrived in their yard (no photos).
Bad timing. I just moved. I used to be 9mi from that salvage yard....
Unfortunately I am now 96mi away.
I was tempted to journey back down there this morning but with no photos of the car I decided my wheelbearings replacement took precedence.

These windy mountain roads up here are brutal on original 100k mi bearings.

I might do the run tomorrow. Thanks again for the confirmation.

AFAIK, xenon projectors were a facelift thing and not an R50/R53 thing.
Is the VIN available to see if the R50 above was equipped with Factory xenon’s?

Both of our 2003 minis (one R50, one R53) had xenons. They're not a facelift thing.

The projector xenon‘s are a facelift thing, not xenon’s themselves. The original xenon’s had a fluted glass lens in the housing.

My very early 2002 Justa (April build) had xenons. Well worth the $$

Good idea with respects to decoding the VIN to get specifics on the car!
Bad thing is all the VIN decoder sites I've tried - well...they all sucked and always barfed up some silly "sorry" excuse for not finding results.
I've tried four of them.
VIN: WMWRC33435TJ65767

Just now tried mdecoder.com which returned build and options data promptly, however no Xenon (or Option code 522) listed on that R50.

Hey - Thanks MCS4FUN.
You've saved me a trip...(that's not to say that the PO may have upgraded to projectors at some point - but...) nevertheless - Thanks!
I tried mdecoder.com twice and came up empty (??).
Tried it a third time and "told me" that I'd exceeded my limit for the day :sly:

The chances of someone upgrading halogens to projector xenons is on the lower side since BCM coding is required along with installing the leveling sensors front and rear. Might be able to go without the sensors and have possible error codes though.

Pre-facelift xenons to projector xenons is supposed to be plug and play, but the chances of a retrofit is still on the lower side. I wouldn’t drive that far unless I saw pics of the headlights and confirmed with the yard that they were still there.

Whats your friends budget? Good deals can sometimes be found on eBay if you’re not in a rush. I missed a set for under $200 and finally got a set which I would consider 7.5-8/10 for $210 shipped.

On the leveling topic… I’ve always wondered how the euro manual level adjustment switch is wired in and coded.

Ah, Yes - I had forgotten about the levelers, coding and such for the non auto leveling headlights. It is no wonder to me now, why I hadn't seen any R50s with OEM projectors (as MCS4FUN posted the options above).
Maybe irrelevant but I do recall a red modded R50 with projectors at a salvage yard about 3years ago. I didn't know about upgrading my pf '04 R53 headlights to projectors until several months later and kicked myself for not pulling them off that R50.
However I did manage to score an Orranje extended aero spoiler off that car not knowing but hear that they are not easy to come by these days.

Not sure what my friend's (member here on NAM), budget is. He has wanted to upgrade his '03 R53 halogens to projectors (for under $200?) for some time now and was envious that I had finally scored and refinished a $30/pair salvage yard finds for my pf R53.
There are no salvage yards near him and Ebay prices have gotten ridiculous for sub par condition projectors. He's more of a purist when it comes to his '03 MCS = aftermarket headlights are out of the question. So I've been keeping my eye out at the salvage yards for the past 2wo years with hopes I can be lucky enough to help him out.

I do miss having the salvage yards near by. My 20.7 y/o Mini just rolled over to 101k mi last week. I'm hoping to keep those miles from racking up too soon.

Ok, I didn't realize they were different. Thanks for the clarification.

Is there a reason the OP's friend should specifically go for projector xenons over the pre-LCI xenons? Granted it's been over a decade, but I remember them as being plenty bright.

I just focused on the projector aspect since that was the original topic of the thread. Some like the updated look of the projector housings, or a better beam pattern might also be a reason. I’m not sure how much different the illumination is between the two types, but either xenon should be a lot better than the halogens. Unfortunately, upgrading to xenons from halogens requires additional wiring and programming which could be a deal breaker for most.