A Look at the BMW Art Cars
Published Sunday, 01 January, 2012 by John Roman. Categories: News.
As far as traditions go, BMW's Art Car is one of the cooler ones in the auto world. Every handful of years for almost four decades, BMW has commissioned a renowned artist to take one of their vehicles and turn it into something artistic. At first the focus was just on BMW vehicles that appeared in races, but over time that has changed so that now pretty much any of the German automakers' models are fair game for a hired artist to transform into something even more staggeringly beautiful than the original.
The names of the artists are pretty impressive-everybody from Frank Stella to Alexander Calder to the great Andy Warhol (you know, the guy who painted the multi-colored Campbell's soup cans?). However, even more impressive than the names are the automobiles themselves. Each one is so uniquely wonderful, and some are so delightfully dated, that it's no wonder BMW has worked so hard to keep the tradition alive.
It all started in 1975 when French racecar driver Herve Poulain asked his buddy Alexander Calder to fancy up his BMW 3.0CSL for the Le Mans race that year. The result was a truly unconventional-looking racecar splashed in the vibrant colors of a rainbow sorbet, the number 93 plastered at an angle inside a white teardrop painted on the vehicle's hood. The car didn't finish the race, but by golly it was one of the prettiest losers the racing world has ever seen.
Tampa BMW fans have enjoyed 16 other art cars in the many years since that inaugural one, and most of the older works involve bright reds and blues and yellows or abstract patterns in the design. As time went on, however, ideas got more radical. The 1989 car looks like what would happen if the '80s got its own Crayola crayon, and the next year Matazo Kayama decked out a 535i with silver and gold so it would glitter in the sunlight like that vampire kid from the "Twilight" movies.
Lakeland car dealers obviously will never sell cars like this, but they can certainly look forward to the positive attention they attract to the BMW brand. The last art car was released in 2010, but there will be more. Goodness only knows what these artists will come up with next.
This article by Business Insider shows the whole lot of the BMW art cars. Give them a gander-we promise it'll be worth your time!
The names of the artists are pretty impressive-everybody from Frank Stella to Alexander Calder to the great Andy Warhol (you know, the guy who painted the multi-colored Campbell's soup cans?). However, even more impressive than the names are the automobiles themselves. Each one is so uniquely wonderful, and some are so delightfully dated, that it's no wonder BMW has worked so hard to keep the tradition alive.
It all started in 1975 when French racecar driver Herve Poulain asked his buddy Alexander Calder to fancy up his BMW 3.0CSL for the Le Mans race that year. The result was a truly unconventional-looking racecar splashed in the vibrant colors of a rainbow sorbet, the number 93 plastered at an angle inside a white teardrop painted on the vehicle's hood. The car didn't finish the race, but by golly it was one of the prettiest losers the racing world has ever seen.
Tampa BMW fans have enjoyed 16 other art cars in the many years since that inaugural one, and most of the older works involve bright reds and blues and yellows or abstract patterns in the design. As time went on, however, ideas got more radical. The 1989 car looks like what would happen if the '80s got its own Crayola crayon, and the next year Matazo Kayama decked out a 535i with silver and gold so it would glitter in the sunlight like that vampire kid from the "Twilight" movies.
Lakeland car dealers obviously will never sell cars like this, but they can certainly look forward to the positive attention they attract to the BMW brand. The last art car was released in 2010, but there will be more. Goodness only knows what these artists will come up with next.
This article by Business Insider shows the whole lot of the BMW art cars. Give them a gander-we promise it'll be worth your time!
Tags: Lakeland car dealers, Tampa BMW
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