Jeff Koons M3 GT2 Art Car

The art car is a weird thing, is it a car with a fancy paint job or is it a piece of art that just happens to use a car as its canvas?

Coming from my perspective (and yours as well I would imagine, if you’re reading this blog) I look at them as cars first works of art second. As with anything 90% of it is complete rubbish and might give it all a bad name but once you get past the tacky animal print cars and ‘art’ that just seems to be mostly stuck on tat, you do get to the cream like the amazing BMW Art Cars.

The BMW Art Car Project started in 1975 when French race car driver Hervé Poulain commissioned American artists Alexander Calder to paint the BMW 3.0 CSL that Poulain would then race in the ’75 Le Mans. Ever since then they have done commissioned a high profile artist to paint one of their race cars. The fact that BMW use race cars and then still race them with the paint on instantly makes them miles cooler than any other art car in existence and then add the fact that the cars actually look amazing and aren’t just a tacky mess like so many other attempts just means they are the coolest art cars around by miles.

The most famous of the BMW art cars are probably the 320i Group 5 car done by Roy Lichtenstein

And the M1 done by Andy Warhol.

Now though the latest car has just be unveiled and it will compete in the 24 hour Le Mans on June 12-13 2010. It is by Jeff Koons and I have to say it looks amazing! It is vibrant and fun and has quite a bit of pop art to it, especially the rear explosion part. A worthy addition to the BMW line up.

If you are looking to crack open the dusty savings accounts to buy one of these instead of the Van Gogh you were just about to get, I’d shut the wallet up again because all the 16 art cars are all stored together and come out for special shows and I don’t think you would have much chance of getting one of them onto your drive any time soon.