Rear marker lights

Materials required

• A pair of miniature position lights.
• The Torx key supplied with the C1.
• A small flat-bladed screwdriver.
• About one metre of 2 x 0.22 mm² cable.
• 2 electrical crimp sleeves or connectors with the appropriate crimping tool (or equivalents).
• 2 wire-tap connectors and pliers or a toothpick.

In the supermarket’s car accessories aisle, I spotted this pair of self-adhesive miniature lights for €3.50 (Fig. 1)… Did you really expect me to leave them there? Of course not! Back home, I took them out of the packaging and fitted them to the spoiler (Fig. 2) for two reasons: first, it is the vehicle’s highest and therefore most visible point; second, it is the most convenient flat surface for sticking the lights in place! Make sure the wire from each light points downwards, so it can enter the cabin directly through the gap between the pillar and the rear window.

Inside, the wires emerge at the sides of the spoiler’s rubber trim (Fig. 3 — green arrows). Make sure they pass behind the rear-window pillars! Using the screwdriver, push the wires well under the rubber so they remain hidden. For convenience, I routed the left-hand light’s wires (on the right in Fig. 3) to the right-hand side (Fig. 3 — red arrow, where they can also be seen). Next I removed the inside roof-pillar trim, first the front piece and then the right-hand one (Fig. 4 — green arrows), to route the wires towards the interior light, which will provide the power supply.

Use the crimp sleeves to connect the two small lights together and to the cable prepared earlier. Route this extension through the right-hand roof trim, with the end reaching inside the housing containing the interior light (Fig. 4 — red arrow). Refit the right-hand trim with all our wires inside, then move on to the interior light.

The 2 wires (+ and −) from the lights can now be connected to the interior light’s power supply, either with two wire-tap connectors (be aware that space is limited), or as I did, by inserting the stripped wire ends into the interior light’s terminal and securing them with two pieces of toothpick… It may seem primitive, but it works!

With everything reassembled, your C1 will be even safer! (Fig. 5) Taking power from the interior light is convenient for routing the wires, but there is another reason too: if you leave the position lights on when parked, these additional lights remain off, so they do not add to the battery load.