A totally subjective ranking of the worst and the best BMW Art Cars

Invite an artist to paint a car; race that car until destruction, or victory. That’s the idea behind the BMW Art Car. Pure, uncut Eurotrash, beautiful in its simplicity. The project started kind of by accident in 1975, when the French auctioneer and racecar driver Hervé Poulain asked his friend Alexander Calder to paint his 1974 BMW 3.0 CSL, ahead of that year’s prestigious endurance race, the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Calder’s supreme modernist take on standard racing livery caused a sensation. A work of art on wheels. In the near five decades since, 20 artists including Calder, Frank Stella, David Hockney, Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg have been commissioned by the German auto maker to design custom paint jobs for their latest models.

Last week saw the unveiling of the latest BMW Art Car, a BMW M Hybrid V8 by the American abstract painter Julie Mehretu, whose distinctive take on space, movement, time and energy perfectly suits the project. On 15th June, Mehretu’s BMW M Hybrid V8, with 640 hp and a top speed of 345km/h, will be put to the test on the Circuit de la Sarthe at Le Mans, France.

I’ll be watching closely: I’m in the market for a car, and while a 2007 Toyota Yaris or a category N Volkswagen Polo might be better suited to my needs and my budget, I can’t help thinking what if… so, I took a look back over previous years’ art cars and came up with this: a totally subjective ranking of the worst and the best BMW Art Cars.

10. Jeff Koons, 2010 M3 GT2

Without a doubt, the worst of them all: Jeff Koons’ 2010 BMW M3 GT2. Koons could have gone weird with it. He could have given us a bulging balloon car with a chrome and rococo interior. Instead, we’ve got this: a car with the aesthetics of a recently divorced dad let loose in Paul Smith. It’s strange, because Koons actually has an eye for cars. In 2022, he and BMW once again teamed up to create his “dream car”, a custom M850i xDrive Gran Coupé covered with pop art style bangs and dust clouds. Sadly, that late entry doesn’t meet the strict criteria of this article.

9. Cao Fei, 2022 M6 GT3

If you’re looking at the picture above and thinking, “that it looks like a CGI render,” that’s because it is. Cao Fei’s 2022 entry is a perfectly normal 2022 M6 GT3 whose art can only be experienced through an augmented reality app. It makes sense when you consider both the artist’s and carmaker’s visions; Cao Fei is a digital media artist, and BMW pioneered the business practice of hiding basic features behind apps and paywalls. So, why not turn the paint job into an optional app-enabled extra? Cao justified her project by saying, “We are entering a new age, where the mind directly controls objects and where thoughts can be transferred, such as unmanned operations and artificial intelligence.” Sure, whatever.

8. A.R. Penck, 1991 BMW Z1

“Is that a Keith Haring?” My editor asked. No, but it’s an easy mistake to make. Haring did paint cars (among them, a 1963 Buick Special, a 1971 Land Rover Series III 109 and… a 1990 BMW Z1, see above) but this car is actually by A.R. Penck, a self-taught neo-expressionist artist from East Germany. Apparently, Penck’s work is often mistaken for that of Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Call me cynical, but I reckon BMW had wanted to work with Haring (who died the year earlier) and had to settle for Penck. That isn’t necessarily a problem, but Penck’s design is less like high art and more like Alan Partridge’s Rover 200.

7. Matazo Kayama, 1990 535i

Getting better now: I’m a sucker for a classic ‘90s car; the boxy body, the wire wheels, and the clean, sporty lines of the leather interior. And this car shows real craftsmanship. Japanese artist Matazo Kayama used airbrushing as well as traditional techniques of Kirigane (foil leaf) and Arare (metal chasing) to create an eye-catching design that embedded silver, gold and aluminium foil within the paint of the car. But that’s why this car is stuck lingering in seventh place; the design is so delicate that this car can’t actually be driven.

6. Andy Warhol, 1979 M1

The 1979 M1 is a car with an odd history: it’s essentially a Lamborghini manufactured by BMW, which explains the unusual wedge-shaped design and mid-engine layout. Its these peculiarities that make it, of all the cars featured here, my favourite. Sadly I can’t get over Andy Warhol’s slapdash approach to design. When asked about his paint job, Warhol said, “I tried to portray a sense of speed. When a car is going really fast all the lines and colours become a blur.” Wow. I suppose that when you hire Warhol, you know what you’re getting. The car’s great, but the art’s awful, so it’s stuck here at number six.

5. Olafur Eliasson, 2007 H2R Project

Over the years, the BMW Art Car project has shifted gears, from simply showing off flash cars and fast drivers, to thinking about serious issues. Olafur Eliasson’s 2007 design was intended to highlight the environmental cost of motoring. The car he worked with was a BMW H2R, a prototype aluminium alloy car designed to run on liquid hydrogen fuel. High tech, low emissions. Eliasson and his team removed the car’s body and replaced it with a structure of steel mesh. Over several days the car was held in freezing conditions and sprayed with water, resulting in an ice shell encasing the vehicle. It was one of the most creative responses to the brief. Beautiful? Yes. Thought-provoking? Yes. Practical? Absolutely not.

4. Alexander Calder, 1974 BMW 3.0 CSL

The original art car is still in the race. Hervé Poulain knew exactly what he was doing when he commissioned Calder. This 1974 3.0 CSL has all the bold simplicity, sharp lines and balanced forms of Calder’s mobiles: strong reds and yellows and just a hint of blue, with white borders to really let the colours pop. It’s eyecatching and instantly recognisable. Interestingly, this was one of the last works ever made by Calder, who died the same year it was unveiled. The car was raced at Le Mans only once, where it was driven by American Sam Posey and the Frenchmen Jean Guichet and Herve Poulain. Sadly, it retired after seven hours and has remained a work of art ever since.

3. Robert Rauschenberg, 1986 BMW 635 CSi

Yo dawg, I heard you like art, so I put art on your art car. Rauschenberg took the idea of the art car literally, covering his 1986 BMW 635 CSi in photo prints of Ingres’ Grande Odalisque and Bronzino’s “Portrait of a Young Man”. The hub caps are decorated with photos of antique plates, while the bonnet is covered with photos Rauschenberg took of trees and swampgrass near his home. It looks back to the past and forward to the future: it was the first time an artist had used photo printing on their car. It’s highbrow, it’s lowbrow, it’s funny and it’s deadly serious. That puts this art car in third place.

2. Roy Lichtenstein, 1977 BMW 320i Group 5 Race Version

In the ’60s, Roy Lichtenstein blew minds with his blown up paintings of blown up fighter planes. In 1977, he had the chance to apply his distinctive primary palette of yellows, blues and greens to a real race car. At first it looks simply like Benday dots and go faster stripes. Then you notice how he’s paid careful attention to the body of the car. His design seems to follow the contours of the car, like its been painted in a wind tunnel. Then you see that it’s not random, it’s a picture of an open road winding through a lush landscape under the rising sun. Pure bliss.

1. Jenny Holzer, 1999 BMW V12 LMR

Protect me from what I want: an open-top race car branded with American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer’s most famous artwork. Dare I say… this version is even better than the original. In an incredibly male-dominated sport (motorsports is one of the few mixed-gender sports, but women drivers are rare) Holzer’s artwork makes a statement. This particular car is special for another reason: in 1999, a V12 LMR earned BMW its one and only win at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Holzer’s art car only took part in the trial run and retired from the main race, but still, that’s a pretty good provenance.