It’s understandable if you only think of BMW’s Art Car effort as a cynical ploy to promote its cars. Although we at TopSpeed can be a jaded bunch, we’re less cynical about BMW’s half-century of allowing the world’s most extraordinary artists to paint its cars. The effort is interesting because it’s unconventional. BMW has never directed artists. And as a car designer recently said to me, but wanted their name withheld, “If you tell an artist what not to do, then good luck with that!”
So, wisely, BMW stepped back from the entire project, had a group of artists create a committee that BMW doesn’t control, and simply chose the cars as “canvases.” True, the artists, naturally, do know a good opportunity for self-promotion when they see it. However, nearly every artist to take part has been of such renown that they hardly needed to hew to any corporate line.
Now, for the forthcoming 2025 Goodwood Revival from the 12th to the 14th of September, BMW will display five of its BMW Art Car series. These include some of the most iconic modern artists’ works, including Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, Ernst Fuchs, David Hockney, and Jeff Koons.
One thing to mention that’s important: each of these artists’ works can be seen on canvases at the world’s most prestigious museums, too. But the Art Cars did something else: They made their work move. They took their creativity into the daylight, where it’s normally never seen, and into weather and under blue or leaden skies.
In that way, BMW turbocharged an idea that we still see today—customization. Modification. Self-expression. Cars as rolling canvases didn’t start with Art Cars, and they’ve hardly stopped since, but we live in a car-accessorizing paradise through efforts just like this. Aftermarket everything has blossomed in part because of the desire of car owners to make their wheels their own.
As for what you can see if you happen to be attending Goodwood? Here’s the list.
1976 I Frank Stella BMW 3.0 CSL
While Alexander Calder painted the first Art Car, which also ran at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Frank Stella’s BMW 3.0 CSL really put the Art Car idea on the map. Stella was inspired by the shape and lines of the racing 3 Series and worked with the fluidity of the vehicle. While other artists have completely blanketed the vehicles, Stella both did and didn’t. He wanted to make the technical prowess of the car the “story” of what was underneath, and used his trademark, restrained black-and-white graphical expression as the basis of his creation.
1977 I Roy Lichtenstein BMW 320i Turbo
If you wanted living proof of how the Art Cars “move,” take a gander at the opening shot of Roy Lichtenstein’s BMW 320i Turbo, and this image of the car on the track. The static car features Lichtenstein’s iconic “dots,” which he used for illustrations that have a pop-art, nearly commercial quality. But on the 320i in full anger mode at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, those dots become strafes, and the car at speed looks somehow primal. It’s both vibrant and like a living creature.
1982 I Ernst Fuchs BMW 635 CSi
In 1982, the independent board that oversees BMW Art Car artists selected the fantasy painter Ernst Fuchs to work on the first-ever Art Car in the series of a production, rather than a racing car. Fuchs’s creation transformed the “Ultimate Driving Machine,” and what was at the time an icon of restrained GT luxury, into what looks like a rolling ball of fire. It is, to be blunt, not “BMW restrained” in the slightest. Which definitely is the point.
1995 I David Hockney BMW 850 CSi
If Fuchs unleashed the notion of going “further” than the sort of restraint exhibited by Stella, David Hochney’s 1995 850 CSi went full cartoon, and also childlike. Hockney painted the driver right on the side of the car. He gave it eyeballs, and he painted a kind of storybook for viewers to interpret. It’s not only unserious: It’s both fun and as complex as any work an artist might put on a canvas.
2010 I Jeff Koons’ BMW M3 GT2
The BMW M3 GT2 that Koons painted brought the Art Car back to the track. Sure, Roy Lichtenstein’s BMW 320i Turbo has two modes—looking like a complete canvas when static and radically alive on the track. But Koons’ M3 GT2 looks like a blur when stationary, and like a colorful windstorm at speed.
TopSpeed’s Take
Can’t make it to Goodwood? BMW has a standing exhibit space in Munich, where a number of the Art Cars are part of the museum. Unfortunately, BMW’s world tour of Art Cars, celebrating the movement’s 50th Anniversary, only has one more stop, in Istanbul, Turkey. But given BMW’s efforts so far—and exhibits at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, as well as other North American shows—it’s likely you can find an Art Car displayed somewhere soon. Also, it’s likely BMW isn’t quitting this highly successful, influential program.
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