BMW Art Cars: all 20, from Calder’s CSL to Mehretu’s Le Mans car

The BMW Art Cars are 20 BMWs that artists have painted, wrapped or rebuilt since 1975, from Alexander Calder’s 3.0 CSL, which raced at Le Mans that June, to Julie Mehretu’s M Hybrid V8 of 2024. BMW owns all 20 and keeps them as the BMW Art Car Collection, based at the BMW Museum in Munich; its 2026 exhibition list names the artists, the cars and the years. Nine have been entered in races as Art Cars, seven of them at Le Mans; the rest are exhibition pieces, most of them painted production cars.

People look them up for the names on them and for the racing cars among them. The first four, painted by Calder, Stella, Lichtenstein and Warhol and raced at Le Mans between 1975 and 1979, are the ones BMW’s 2018 museum release calls the “Big Four”; David Hockney’s 850 CSi of 1995 is the one British work in the series.

How the BMW Art Car programme began

The first BMW Art Car was the idea of Hervé Poulain, a French auctioneer and racing driver, who wanted an artist to paint the car he would drive at Le Mans. With Jochen Neerpasch, then head of BMW Motorsport, he asked his friend, the American sculptor Alexander Calder, to paint a BMW 3.0 CSL, and the car took the start of the 24 Hours on 14 June 1975, BMW’s 50th-anniversary release of March 2025 records. BMW says the project was meant as a one-off; the car retired after seven hours, but the crowd took to it and BMW carried on. Calder’s message to Poulain, as BMW quotes it, was “Hervé, win! But drive carefully!”

The next three cars came through the New York gallerist Leo Castelli, BMW says: Frank Stella’s 3.0 CSL in 1976, Roy Lichtenstein’s 320 in 1977 and Andy Warhol’s M1 in 1979, all raced at Le Mans, Lichtenstein’s and Warhol’s with Poulain driving. The ACO, which runs the race, wrote in January 2026 that Warhol, “like his predecessors”, was not paid.

From 1982 to 1992 the series moved to production cars and to artists from outside the United States, beginning with the Austrian Ernst Fuchs. BMW went back to racing cars with Jenny Holzer’s V12 LMR in 1999, and every Art Car since Jeff Koons’s M3 GT2 of 2010 has been a race car built to compete. The count grew slowly: BMW’s 2003 release on its miniatures gave 15 cars, BMW said 17 from 2010 to 2016, and Mehretu’s car made 20 in 2024.

How many BMW Art Cars are there? All 20 in order

There are 20 official BMW Art Cars in the BMW Art Car Collection, which BMW’s releases call its “rolling sculptures”. BMW numbers them in order of commission, which is why Cao Fei’s car is No. 18 and John Baldessari’s No. 19, although Baldessari’s was finished first: BMW’s release of August 2016 says a jury of twelve museum directors and curators chose the two artists in November 2015 for the 18th and 19th cars respectively.

BMW’s own dates for Cao Fei’s car differ: its March 2025 list gives 2016, the year she began work, while the 2026 list gives 2017, the year the car was revealed in Beijing.

The Le Mans BMW Art Cars of 1975 to 1979

The first four BMW Art Cars were racing cars entered at Le Mans, and two of them finished. Calder, Stella and Lichtenstein each designed on a scale model that was then transferred to the car; Warhol was the first to paint the car itself, the 2018 museum release says.

Calder’s BMW 3.0 CSL (No. 1, 1975)

Calder’s car was a 3.0 CSL, the coupé that won the European Touring Car Championship in 1973, as the ACO’s history of the car notes. Poulain shared it with Sam Posey and Jean Guichet. BMW’s 1999 press kit on the collection lists its six-cylinder engine as 3,210 cc and 480 PS, with a top speed of 291 km/h.

Stella’s BMW 3.0 CSL (No. 2, 1976)

Stella covered his CSL in a black-and-white grid taken from technical graph paper, applied by BMW’s painter Walter Maurer. The car had a turbocharged version of the same engine, 750 PS by BMW’s figures, and Brian Redman and Peter Gregg qualified it eighth before an oil problem put it out, the ACO’s account says. Stella told the ACO the design “was just luck” and that “black and white reproduces really well so it separated itself from the field”. BMW’s 1999 kit adds that the car also ran in a World Championship race at Dijon, driven by Stella’s friend Ronnie Peterson.

Lichtenstein’s BMW 320i (No. 3, 1977)

Lichtenstein painted his Ben-Day dots and the world the car passes through, from the sun to the road, on a Group 5 BMW 320i, unveiled at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. “Roy Lichtenstein used the sun rays and dots that are part of all his work,” Poulain told the ACO. Poulain and Marcel Mignot drove the 320i as No. 50, and it finished ninth overall and won its class, the first Art Car to finish Le Mans. Mignot told the ACO that the oil pressure “was at zero” at about 8 pm and that the engine lost power through the night: “we finished ninth all the same.”

Warhol’s BMW M1 (No. 4, 1979)

Warhol’s first design was for a 320 that BMW was to enter at Le Mans in 1978, and it covered the windows, so BMW Motorsport offered him the BMW M1 instead, the new mid-engined car it had built to take on Porsche in Group 4 racing, BMW of North America’s release of August 2025 explains. He painted the BMW M1, a Group 4 racing car, himself, by hand, putting on more than 13 lb (about 6 kg) of Sikkens paint in 28 minutes. Poulain, Mignot and Manfred Winkelhock started 23rd and finished sixth overall and second in the IMSA class, according to the ACO’s 2026 article, which quotes Poulain: “I was expecting a livery based on Marilyn Monroe and cans of soup.” BMW’s best-known quote from Warhol is “I love that car. It has turned out better than the artwork.”

In 2025 the car was added to the US National Historic Vehicle Register as its 37th vehicle. On 17 September 2025, as it was being unloaded for the Cars at the Capital show on the National Mall in Washington, a winch broke and a transport driver was killed beneath it, Octane reported.

BMW Art Cars on production cars, 1982 to 1995

Between 1982 and 1995 ten artists painted BMWs that were never meant to race; two of them, the Australian M3s, were old racing cars. BMW’s 1999 kit says Fuchs’s car, like every Art Car of the years that followed, was an exhibition piece, never to be used on the road or in a race.

Ernst Fuchs’s BMW 635 CSi (No. 5, 1982)

Fuchs, a founder of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, painted a 635 CSi for the exhibition “Art as Illustration, Illustration as Art” and called it “Fire Fox on a Hare Hunt”: a hare crossing a motorway at night and leaping over a burning car. It was the first Art Car based on a production BMW.

Robert Rauschenberg’s BMW 635 CSi (No. 6, 1986)

Rauschenberg’s 635 CSi, shown first at the BMW Gallery in New York, was the first to carry photographs. One side has a Bronzino portrait, the other an odalisque by Ingres, with his own pictures of Everglades swamp grass, and the hubcaps show antique plates, BMW’s 1999 kit records. He reused the motifs in his six-part “Beamer” series of 1988. BMW quotes him: “This car is the fulfilment of my dream. I would like to do ten more.”

The BMW M3 Group A cars of Michael Jagamara Nelson and Ken Done (Nos. 7 and 8, 1989)

Two Australians painted Group A M3s in 1989. BMW asked Terence Measham, director of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, to name an Aboriginal artist, and he chose Nelson, a Warlpiri painter of the Papunya Tula group, who covered a black M3 in seven days with what he called a landscape seen from an aeroplane, the 1999 kit says. Done painted parrots and parrotfish: “Both are beautiful and able to move at fantastic speeds,” he said, quoted in BMW’s 2019 release for Art Dubai. Both had raced before they were painted: Nelson’s came from BMW Australia’s racing department, and the kit says Done’s car had won the Australian Group A drivers’ title in 1987, and Nelson’s an Australian championship with Tony Longhurst the same year.

Matazo Kayama’s BMW 535i and César Manrique’s BMW 730i (Nos. 9 and 10, 1990)

Kayama, born in Kyoto in 1927, airbrushed blue shadows on a silver 535i and laid on small pieces of silver, gold and aluminium foil by the Japanese kirigane and arare methods, in a design he based on his earlier “Snow, Moon and Cherry Blossoms”. Manrique, the painter, sculptor and architect whose buildings and landscapes shaped Lanzarote, painted a 730i in sweeping lines like those of his architecture, in bright colours, so that, he said, it would seem to glide through space without resistance. His theme was movement, and he held that the automobile shapes the look of our towns, BMW’s 1999 kit explains.

A.R. Penck’s BMW Z1 (No. 11, 1991)

Penck, born in Dresden in 1939 and expelled from East Germany in 1980, was the first German Art Car artist. In the spring of 1991 he painted a red Z1 with black figures, among them a crocodile, a lion and his “X-Hunter”. The Z1 was limited to 8,000 cars, the 1999 kit notes, and it quotes Penck: “Art on art, art on technology, that interested me, above all art on a three-dimensional object” (translated from the German).

Esther Mahlangu’s BMW 525i (No. 12, 1991)

Mahlangu, an Ndebele painter born in 1935 in Middelburg in what was then the Transvaal, painted a 525i in bands of patterns from the Ndebele tradition of house painting, which is women’s work. She was the first woman and the first African to make a BMW Art Car, BMW’s Frieze London release of 2024 notes.

Sandro Chia’s BMW M3 GTR (No. 13, 1992)

Chia, the only Italian in the series, covered a prototype BMW M3 GTR touring car in faces and colour, then signed it, dated it 9 October 1992 and declared it a finished work of art. A surface, he said, had called out to him, “Paint me, paint me!”, BMW Group India’s 2017 release recounts.

David Hockney’s BMW 850 CSi (No. 14, 1995)

Hockney, born in Bradford in 1937, is the British artist of the series. He painted the inside of an 850 CSi on its outside: the engine’s intake pipes on the bonnet, the driver’s outline on the door and his dachshund Stanley on the back seat. He signed it on 20 April 1995 after months of work on a maquette. “BMW gave me a model of the car and I looked at it time and time again,” he said, quoted in BMW’s release for the 2012 London exhibition. BMW said in 2025 that the car has never been driven on the road or raced.

BMW Art Cars of 1999 and 2007: Holzer and Eliasson

The two BMW Art Cars between 1999 and 2007 were a Le Mans prototype that never started the race and a hydrogen record car turned into an installation of ice.

Jenny Holzer’s BMW V12 LMR (No. 15, 1999)

The BMW V12 LMR was BMW’s Le Mans prototype of 1999, with a V12 of nearly 6 litres and 580 hp, by the ACO’s figures. Holzer put phrases from her Truisms and Survival series on it in chrome lettering and fluorescent colours, “Protect me from what I want” among them. Joachim Winkelhock and Tom Kristensen were seventh fastest in pre-qualifying in May 1999 with a 3:34.493, but BMW withdrew the car to concentrate on its other two, and the sister No. 15 car won the race, the ACO’s 2026 article says. BMW’s 1999 kit records that the Art Car was shown after a lap of honour during the race, on 12 and 13 June. Holzer told BMW she “thought it would be nice if women could participate other than standing around in bikinis.”

Olafur Eliasson’s BMW H2R (No. 16, 2007)

The BMW H2R is a hydrogen-powered car built for speed records. Eliasson removed its body and replaced it with steel mesh, reflective steel panels and layers of ice; he called the work “Your mobile expectations: BMW H2R project”. It was first shown in San Francisco in 2007 and at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich in 2008, BMW’s 2009 release records. It is shown as a frozen installation, and BMW Welt in 2026 was only the fourth place to show it that way since 2007, BMW said at the opening.

Jeff Koons’s BMW M3 GT2 Art Car at Le Mans in 2010

Koons’s car, the 17th, was a BMW M3 GT2 that BMW homologated for the 2010 Le Mans 24 Hours and raced in the GT2 class. Koons had first told BMW he wanted to make an Art Car in 2003, and he had driven a BMW when he lived in Munich more than 20 years before, BMW’s announcement of February 2010 says.

The design

As part of his creative process, Koons collected pictures of race cars, colours, speed and explosions as sources of inspiration and layered them into a digital collage. “Koons’ canvas is a BMW M3 GT2,” as BMW put it. “These race cars are like life, they are powerful and there is a lot of energy,” he said at the premiere. The design was printed on vinyl wrap and covered in two coats of clear lacquer, because there were only two months between his first sketches and the premiere, the ACO’s account says. His studio uses 3-D CAD models for its sculptures, and he used them to fit the design to the bodywork. He rode in an M1 and took part in tests at Sebring with Rahal Letterman Racing to get a feel for speed.

The premiere and the number 79

Koons unveiled and signed the car on 1 June 2010 at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, in front of 300 guests, where Lichtenstein had signed his car in 1977, BMW’s release of 2 June 2010 says. The race number 79 was for Warhol’s 1979 car, which had carried 76 for Stella’s car of 1976, BMW explained in April 2010, when it announced that the car would race; a 2010 SkiddMark report also noted that Bono had named Koons as one of the artists who could make the world fall in love with cars again.

The race

Andy Priaulx, Dirk Müller and Dirk Werner drove the Art Car. It lost time in unscheduled stops for repairs, and on 12 June Priaulx ran out of fuel on the way into the Indianapolis corner, although the fuel put in at the previous stop should have lasted the lap, BMW’s race-day release said. The sister No. 78 car of Jörg Müller, Augusto Farfus and Uwe Alzen finished sixth in GT2. Koons told BMW afterwards: “These race cars are like gladiators out there.”

BMW Art Cars since 2016: Baldessari, Cao Fei and Mehretu

The three BMW Art Cars made since 2016 were all built to race, and two of them finished their races.

John Baldessari’s BMW M6 GTLM (No. 19, 2016)

Baldessari, then 85, gave the white M6 GTLM a red dot on the roof, the word “FAST” on the driver’s side and a picture of the car itself on the other; it premiered at Art Basel Miami Beach on 30 November 2016. At the Daytona 24 Hours in January 2017 Bill Auberlen, Alexander Sims, Augusto Farfus and Bruno Spengler finished eighth in the GTLM class after 652 laps of a race with heavy rain and 21 full-course yellows, BMW’s race report says. It was the third Art Car to finish the 24-hour race it entered, after Lichtenstein’s and Warhol’s. BMW adds that it was the first Art Car to race without sponsors’ logos.

Cao Fei’s BMW M6 GT3 (No. 18, 2017)

Cao Fei, born in 1978, is the youngest BMW Art Car artist and the first Chinese one. Her car is an M6 GT3 left in plain carbon black, with a video and an app that uses augmented-reality technology to show light around it on a phone; it was revealed at the Minsheng Art Museum in Beijing on 31 May 2017, BMW’s release of that day says. At the FIA GT World Cup in Macau that November, Farfus finished second in the qualification race, BMW reported, and fourth in the main race after a collision sent him to the pits and to the back of the field, its report of the main race says.

Julie Mehretu’s BMW M Hybrid V8 (No. 20, 2024)

The BMW M Hybrid V8 was the Hypercar with which BMW returned to the top class of endurance motorsport, and to Le Mans, in 2024. Mehretu based her design on her painting Everywhen (2021–23), transferred by 3D mapping to a foil wrap light enough to race, and the car made its debut at the Centre Pompidou on 21 May 2024, BMW’s premiere release says. At Le Mans in June Sheldon van der Linde, Robin Frijns and René Rast qualified it 16th with a 3:26.223. A puncture in the first hour, a crash into the tyres at a chicane and a long pit stop left it to take the flag after 96 laps, unclassified, according to the ACO’s 2026 article. Mehretu also set up the African Film and Media Arts Collective with the producer Mehret Mandefro as part of the project.

BMW Art Car race results

Nine BMW Art Cars have been entered in races; three finished a 24-hour race, and Lichtenstein’s 320 is the only class winner.

Engines and performance of the BMW Art Cars

The BMW Art Cars run from a 170 PS Z1 roadster to a 750 PS turbocharged racing CSL. BMW’s 1999 kit gave the engine of each of the first 15 cars; Chia’s prototype has no figures there.

The ACO gives the V12 LMR a top speed of 340 km/h.

How BMW chooses Art Car artists

BMW now chooses Art Car artists through juries of museum directors and curators, and the artist has a free hand; the cars are part of its cultural engagement, which BMW puts at more than 100 initiatives in art, music, film and design. The first cars came through Poulain’s friendships and Castelli’s gallery; for Nos. 18 and 19 a jury of twelve met at the Guggenheim in New York on 19 November 2015, at BMW’s 40th-anniversary event, and chose Cao Fei and Baldessari unanimously. BMW of North America’s 2025 release describes the jury as independent and worldwide and says the artist “always maintains complete creative freedom”. BMW of North America’s release names Thomas Girst as the BMW Group’s head of arts and culture. BMW’s engineers and designers work with the artist on how the design can be carried by a racing car; Eliasson’s exchanges with them ran over three years, by BMW’s 2009 account.

Unofficial BMW Art Cars

Several BMWs painted or designed by artists sit outside BMW’s collection of 20. The best known is the M1 Procar that the American racer Peter Gregg ordered in 1979 and Frank Stella painted for him as a tribute to their friend Ronnie Peterson. BMW Motorsport built it to Group 4 Procar specification, and Stella based the design on his Polar Coordinates series. The car went to the Guggenheim Museum in 1999, and in 2011 the museum gave it to Bonhams to sell at Quail Lodge in California; Bonhams’s release called it at the time “the only BMW car ever painted by an authorized BMW Art Car artist for a private client”.

Keith Haring painted a red BMW Z1 at the Galerie Hans Mayer in Düsseldorf in 1987, kunstmarkt.com reported in 2000, when the car was shown in his retrospective at the Ludwig Forum in Aachen. A Haring Z1 was in the Petersen Automotive Museum’s exhibition “The Unconventional Canvases of Keith Haring” in Los Angeles from December 2016 to June 2017, InsideHook reported. Haring never made one of BMW’s numbered Art Cars.

In 2022 BMW sold THE 8 X JEFF KOONS, a limited edition of 99 BMW 8 Series Gran Coupés designed by the artist of Art Car No. 17, new to private buyers, at $350,000 in the United States as the M850i xDrive. Each car takes several hundred hours of paintwork, and the lines of colour at the rear refer to his M3 GT2 of 2010, BMW of North America’s release of 16 February 2022 says. The edition is not one of the 20 Art Cars.

Where to see the BMW Art Cars

BMW calls the BMW Museum in Munich the home of the BMW Art Cars, and several are usually on display there while the rest travel to art fairs and museums, BMW’s 2015 release says. Which cars are in Munich changes; from June 2025 into early 2026 the museum showed the three M3-based cars of Nelson, Done and Chia, BMW announced.

The 50th-anniversary world tour

For the collection’s 50th anniversary BMW sent the BMW Art Cars on a world tour from March 2025, beginning in Vienna and at Art Basel in Hong Kong, which had stopped at 60 places in more than 30 countries and drawn more than 2 million visitors by mid-2026. It ended at BMW Welt in Munich, where all 20 BMW Art Cars were shown together, the whole collection of vehicles in one place for the first time, from 29 July to 31 August 2026. The seven cars that raced or entered at Le Mans were shown together at Rétromobile in Paris from 28 January to 1 February 2026, BMW’s Rétromobile release says.

The BMW Art Cars in Britain

The collection was first shown in the UK in the summer of 2012: Art Drive!, run by the ICA for the London 2012 Festival, put 16 cars over six floors of the NCP car park on Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch from 21 July to 4 August, with free entry. The 2025 tour brought five cars (Stella, Lichtenstein, Fuchs, Hockney and Koons) to the Goodwood Revival on 12 to 14 September, BMW’s Goodwood release says, and Hockney’s car stood in the lobby of The Peninsula London from 14 October to 3 November 2025.

BMW Art Car models and books

BMW has sold 1:18 models of the BMW Art Cars since 2003, as the Museum Edition. The first two, Calder’s CSL and Holzer’s V12 LMR, went on sale in March 2003 at a recommended €119 each, with Warhol’s M1 and Chia’s M3 GTR following that June, the 2003 release says. In 2025 BMW added a 1:18 model of Mehretu’s car and announced a 1:43 version.

The standard book is BMW Art Cars, published by Hatje Cantz: BMW of North America’s 2014 release describes the first edition as 195 pages of pictures, portraits and interviews, and BMW’s March 2025 release announced a third edition with essays on all 20 cars and a cover by Mehretu.

Questions

Who painted the first BMW Art Car?

Alexander Calder, the American sculptor, painted the first BMW Art Car in 1975: a 3.0 CSL that Hervé Poulain, Sam Posey and Jean Guichet drove at Le Mans that June. It retired after about seven hours.

Did Andy Warhol paint his BMW M1 himself?

Yes. The three artists before him designed on scale models, but Warhol painted the M1 itself in 1979; BMW says he put more than 13 lb of paint on it by hand in 28 minutes.

Which BMW Art Car was made by a British artist?

No. 14, the 850 CSi that David Hockney, born in Bradford in 1937, finished in April 1995. It shows the inside of the car on its outside, with his dachshund Stanley on the back seat.

Who was the first woman to design a BMW Art Car?

Esther Mahlangu, the South African Ndebele painter, who painted a 525i in 1991. She was also the first African artist in the series.

Can you buy a BMW Art Car?

The 20 official Art Cars belong to BMW. Frank Stella’s 1979 M1 Procar for Peter Gregg, painted outside the series, was offered by Bonhams in 2011, and the 99 cars of a BMW 8 Series edition designed by the artist of Art Car No. 17 were sold new in 2022 at $350,000 each in the US. BMW sells 1:18 models of the Art Cars, at €119 each when the range began in 2003.

Has a BMW Art Car ever won a race?

None has won outright. Roy Lichtenstein’s 320 won its class at Le Mans in 1977, finishing ninth overall, and Warhol’s M1 was sixth overall and second in its class in 1979.

What is the latest BMW Art Car?

No. 20, Julie Mehretu’s BMW M Hybrid V8, unveiled at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on 21 May 2024 and raced at Le Mans that June.

Sources

• BMW Group PressClub, “BMW Art Cars – 20 artists, 50 years of innovation. Reunited at BMW Welt”, 2026: the list of all 20 cars, models and years; the 2026 exhibition, tour figures.
• BMW Group PressClub, “World Tour: BMW Art Car Collection celebrates 50th anniversary”, 12 March 2025: origins, 14 June 1975, Castelli, eras, numbering, quotes, models, third edition of the book.
• BMW AG, “BMW Art Car Collection” press kit (German), 1999: engines and performance of cars 1–15; Stella at Dijon; the artists of cars 5–15; Holzer at Le Mans 1999.
• BMW AG, “The art of miniatures”, March 2003: 15 cars; 1:18 models and price.
• ACO (24h-lemans.com), Calder’s 3.0 CSL, 10 January 2026: drivers and retirement, 1975.
• ACO, Stella’s 3.0 CSL, 13 January 2026: Walter Maurer, drivers, qualifying, Stella’s words.
• ACO, Lichtenstein’s 320, 15 January 2026: No. 50, ninth overall and class win, Mignot’s words.
• ACO, Warhol’s M1, 16 January 2026: no payment, 28 minutes, qualifying and result, Poulain’s words.
• ACO, Holzer’s V12 LMR, 18 January 2026: texts, pre-qualifying time, withdrawal, 340 km/h.
• ACO, Koons’s M3 GT2, 20 January 2026: design process, vinyl wrap, Sebring tests.
• ACO, Mehretu’s M Hybrid V8, 22 January 2026: drivers, qualifying, 96 laps, unclassified.
• BMW of North America, Pebble Beach release, 15 August 2025: Warhol’s 320 design, paint and time, National Historic Vehicle Register, jury and creative freedom.
• Octane, “Man killed in Washington DC while unloading Andy Warhol BMW M1 Art Car”, 19 September 2025: the accident.
• BMW Group PressClub, Ken Done’s Art Car at Art Dubai, March 2019: Done’s words.
• BMW Group PressClub, BMW honours Esther Mahlangu at Frieze London, 2024: first woman and first African artist.
• BMW Group India, “Art Personified”, January 2017: Chia’s car; 2015 jury at the Guggenheim; Baldessari premiere date.
• BMW Group PressClub, “ART DRIVE! The BMW Art Car Collection 1975–2010”, 2012: the London exhibition; Hockney’s words.
• BMW Group PressClub, Hockney’s Art Car at The Peninsula London, October 2025: the design, Stanley, never driven or raced.
• BMW Group PressClub, Eliasson’s H2R at the Louisiana Museum, 2009: the work, its premieres, three years’ collaboration.
• BMW Group PressClub, “Jeff Koons to create new BMW Art Car”, February 2010: 2003 request, Munich.
• BMW Group PressClub, Koons’s Art Car will race at Le Mans, April 2010: the number 79.
• BMW Group PressClub, Koons’s world premiere in Paris, 2 June 2010: 1 June unveiling, 300 guests.
• BMW Motorsport race-day release, 12 June 2010, as reproduced by BimmerFile: the Art Car’s retirement.
• BMW Group PressClub, “Jeff Koons: These race cars are like gladiators”, 14 June 2010: the No. 78 result, Koons’s words.
• SkiddMark, “Jeff Koons BMW M3 GT2 Art Car premieres in Paris”, 2010: Bono’s remark, the premiere.
• BMW Group PressClub, First BMW Art Car by a Chinese artist, August 2016: the jury of twelve, Nos. 18 and 19.
• BMW Group PressClub, “Eighth place in Daytona for the 19th BMW Art Car”, January 2017: Daytona result.
• BMW Group PressClub, Baldessari’s Art Car at the Neue Nationalgalerie, 2025: the design, no sponsor logos.
• BMW Group PressClub, “BMW Art Car reloaded”, 31 May 2017: Cao Fei’s car and reveal.
• BMW Group PressClub, Macau qualification race and main race, 18 and 19 November 2017.
• BMW Group PressClub, Mehretu’s Art Car premiere, 21 May 2024: Everywhen, 3D mapping, foil.
• Bonhams release, 12 May 2011, as reproduced by Autoblog: Stella’s M1 for Peter Gregg.
• BMW Group PressClub, “BMW Art Cars | How a vision became reality” at the BMW Museum, 2018: the “Big Four”; scale models before Warhol.
• kunstmarkt.com, “Haring im Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst Aachen” (German), 2000: Haring’s Z1, painted at the Galerie Hans Mayer in 1987.
• InsideHook, “Rare Autos Painted by Keith Haring on Display at the Petersen Automotive Museum”, 9 December 2016: the Haring Z1 at the Petersen, 2016–17.
• BMW of North America, “BMW and Jeff Koons Present THE 8 X JEFF KOONS”, 16 February 2022: 99 cars, $350,000, the design.
• BMW Group PressClub, “BMW celebrates 40 years of BMW Art Cars”, 26 May 2015: the BMW Museum as home, 17 artists.
• BMW Group PressClub, 50 Years of BMW Art Cars and the 3 Series at the BMW Museum, 2025: the three M3 Art Cars on show.
• BMW Group PressClub, Rétromobile 2026 release, 2025: the seven Le Mans cars in Paris.
• BMW Group PressClub, “Art in motion: BMW Art Cars at the 2025 Goodwood Revival”, 28 August 2025: the five cars at Goodwood.
• BMW of North America, Hatje Cantz book release, 24 April 2014: the first edition of BMW Art Cars; Lichtenstein’s car showing the world from the sun to the tarmac.