Meet BMW’s Latest Le Mans Art Car

The world of cars and art rarely cross over, but one of the special exceptions is BMW’s series of Art Cars, in which the Munich manufacturer hands one of its cars to a contemporary artist for them to use as a canvas. Often, it’s one of BMW’s racing cars that gets the treatment, which we then get to see in action out on track.

This year, with BMW returning to the top class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans for the first time since 1999, the Art Car project is back too for its 20th instalment. For this year’s race, the number 20 BMW M Hybrid V8 LMDh racer has been decked out in a livery by American Ethiopian artist Julie Mehretu.

Mehretu, who’s known for creating large-scale, multi-layered abstract landscapes, has transferred that vocabulary onto a model of the M Hybrid V8 using 3D mapping. This, in turn, has created a film wrap that’s been applied to the real thing.

The livery is made up of digitally altered photographs superimposed onto a dot matrix grid, and also features black markings that are characteristic of Mehretu’s work. It’s inspired by her large-scale work, ‘Everywhen’, completed between 2021 and 2023. Speaking of the livery’s creation, Mehretu said: “In the studio where I had the model of the BMW M Hybrid V8 I was just sitting in front of the painting and I thought: what would happen if this car seemed to go through that painting and becomes affected by it? The idea was to make a remix, a mash-up of the painting. I kept seeing that painting kind of dripping into the car. Even the kidneys of the car inhaled the painting.”

The art car will hit the track during the 24 Hours of Le Mans race weekend between 12 and 16 June, driven by BMW works drivers Sheldon Van Der Linde, Robin Frijns and René Rast. Following the race, it’ll start its second life as an art exhibit, touring various museums and galleries.

Mehretu joins names such as Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and David Hockney, who’ve all contributed to the Art Car project in the past. The last Art Car was an M6 GTE with a livery by American artist John Baldessari, and raced at Daytona in 2017. The last time one ran at Le Mans, it was the Jeff Koons-painted M3 GT2 in 2010. The project’s return adds a welcome splash of extra colour to one of the most stacked Le Mans grids in years.