There are car shows, and then there’s Pebble Beach. A place where billionaires in Panama hats sip champagne while arguing over the authenticity of door handles on pre-war Bugattis. But this year, amid the polished chrome and concours snobbery, something a little different is happening. BMW has decided to bring along two of its greatest hits — not straight from Munich, but straight out of the art world. Yes, it’s time once again for the BMW Art Cars to take centre stage.
For fifty years, the Bavarians have been throwing their cars at artists and saying: “Go on, then. Do your worst.” The results? A global collection of rolling sculptures painted, sprayed, wrapped and occasionally vandalised by some of the biggest names in contemporary art. This August, at the 74th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, two of the wildest will be on display: Andy Warhol’s legendary M1 from 1979 and Julie Mehretu’s M Hybrid V8 from 2024.
The Pop Art Cannonball
Warhol’s BMW M1 Group 4 is the kind of thing you’d doodle on the back of a maths textbook if your crayons were dipped in LSD. Painted by hand in just 28 minutes (because even Warhol had places to be), the M1 wears broad, furious brushstrokes of colour that look less like precision engineering and more like a rave in a paint factory.
The story goes that Hervé Poulain, the French racing driver and art dealer who dreamt up the entire BMW Art Car concept, described Warhol’s performance as “like a live dance.” Which is a polite way of saying he attacked the car with paint like a man possessed. The result? Still utterly mesmerising today, a half-race car, half-canvas mashup that thundered through the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1979.
Fast-Forward to 2024
On the other end of the timeline sits Julie Mehretu’s BMW M Hybrid V8 — a furious, electrified Le Mans prototype that looks like someone detonated a colour printer in a wind tunnel. Mehretu, one of the most acclaimed artists of her generation, isn’t interested in pretty patterns. Her work wrestles with politics, conflict, and identity — and now it does so at 200mph. First revealed in Paris at the Centre Pompidou before racing at Le Mans, it’s now set for its North American premiere at Pebble Beach.
And because BMW loves a good cultural detour, Mehretu’s project is tied to the African Film and Media Arts Collective, making this the first Art Car to double as both a racing prototype and a platform for global storytelling.
The Grand Tour of Art on Wheels
The Pebble Beach appearance is just the start. Warhol’s car is off to Washington D.C.’s Hirshhorn Museum, where it’ll sit beside America’s most famous monuments, confusing tourists who were expecting another marble statue. Mehretu’s car, meanwhile, will head to Bridgehampton’s ultra-exclusive The Bridge event — where 200 of the world’s greatest sports cars gather on the site of a defunct race track. There, it’ll share the spotlight with another crossover curiosity: a McLaren Artura GT4 given a wild new skin by American artist Mickalene Thomas.
Think of it as an art-off, or perhaps a support race in the great competition between colour palettes and horsepower.
The Bigger Picture
BMW’s Art Car project began in 1975 when Alexander Calder daubed a BMW 3.0 CSL, the same year the German brand officially started doing business in the USA. Half a century later, the roster of names who’ve taken a brush (or computer, or chisel) to BMWs reads like a Tate Modern greatest hits: Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, Esther Mahlangu, and now Mehretu.
And that’s what makes the collection so unusual. Each car is wildly different, each one completely shaped by its creator’s obsessions. Some are beautiful, some divisive, all of them utterly unique. Unlike most art, however, these pieces don’t sit still. They roar down straights at Le Mans, they snarl on racetracks, and they occasionally get splattered with bugs at 200mph.
Which, let’s be honest, is how art should be.
Source: BMW