Over 120,000 People Visited BMW Welt To See All The Art Cars
Article Summary
- BMW brought all 20 Art Cars together for the first time, giving visitors a rare chance to see the complete collection in one place.
- BMW is also bringing five Art Cars into its newest cars, allowing owners of new models with iDrive X to display the artwork on the windshield projection.
- The Art Cars aren’t disappearing after the anniversary, with several continuing to appear at museums and cultural events around the world.
BMW pulled off something that had never been done before, and more than 120,000 people showed up to see it. All 20 BMW Art Cars were reunited under one roof at BMW Welt in Munich for the first time ever. The exhibition ran from July 29 through August 31, marking the grand finale of the Art Car World Tour’s 50th-anniversary celebrations.
The free exhibition brought together five decades of BMWs transformed by some of the world’s most influential artists. It started with Alexander Calder’s 1975 BMW 3.0 CSL and ended with Julie Mehretu’s 2024 BMW M Hybrid V8. In between were cars created by household names such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, David Hockney, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Esther Mahlangu, Jeff Koons, Cao Fei, and Jenny Holzer.
Some of the cars are arguably more spectacular than others, but the collection’s diversity is part of its appeal. These aren’t simply BMWs with fancy paint jobs. Each artist was free to interpret the car in their own way, turning the vehicles into rolling works of art. The Munich exhibition capped off an even bigger global celebration. Since March 2025, the BMW Art Car World Tour has made 60 stops in more than 30 countries across five continents.
More than two million people saw the Art Cars during the worldwide tour, which included events such as the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Le Mans Classic, Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, and Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este. BMW isn’t putting the collection completely back into storage now that the anniversary exhibition is over. Starting September 30, the BMW Welt app will offer digital content covering the history and creation of the Art Cars.
The BMW Art Car Becomes A Widget For The Latest Models
If you happen to have one of the newer BMWs that run on iDrive X, there’s good news. BMW is also bringing five Art Cars to the Panoramic iDrive as widgets. That’s marketing lingo for the pillar-to-pillar windshield projection. The new iX3 was the first BMW to feature it, with the i3 and X5/iX5 following shortly afterward.
Owners will be able to select artwork from Ken Done’s 1989 M3 Group A, César Manrique’s 1990 730i, A.R. Penck’s 1991 Z1, Esther Mahlangu’s 1991 525i, or David Hockney’s 1995 850 CSi.
Meanwhile, the actual cars will continue traveling. Robert Rauschenberg’s Art Car is now on display at the BMW Museum in Munich, while Julie Mehretu’s M Hybrid V8 will head to Cape Town in December.
BMW remains tight-lipped about the next Art Car, though it’s likely not in a rush since Julie Mehretu’s M Hybrid V8 is only a couple of years old. In the meantime, all we can do is speculate about the identity of the #21 car and whether the time has come for the first EV to get the Art Car treatment. Perhaps the M3 ZA0? We can already hear the outcry from traditionalists….
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