15 Examples Of Awesome Automotive Art

Our cars, ourselves – and if tattooing our bodies is desirable, arting up our cars is as well. These 15 artisticautomotive expressionsillustrate how some are driven to put a personal stamp on the steel skins of the 4-wheeled objects of our affection.

Mobile Maker eets Mobile Machine

(images via: World Car Fans and Jiazi)

It seems only natural that an artist known for creating mobiles would choose the ultimate mobile as his medium. Such is the case with Alexander Calder, commissioned by Herve Poulain to give his 1975 BMW 3.0 CSL “Batmobile” a new and distinctive look. Poulain, an art auctioneer when he wasn’t racing at Le Mans and other touring car circuits, took his Calder-ized Bimmer racing. BMW bigwigs were so impressed that the German automaker decided to commission more Art Cars in the Calder mode.

Bimmers That Glimmer

(images via: Look Into My Owl, Daylife and Autofiends)

Art ain’t cheap – at least corporate art sure isn’t, and when you’re BMW you can afford to bring cool cars and famous artists together. A unique series of four BMW Art Cars featured acclaimed artists like Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg doing what they do best on sheet metal canvasses.

Fender Bender

(image via: Wooster Collective)

Someone is driving this rolling statement of raw power around Berlin, Germany. Combining classic trompe l’oeil with a dash of surrealism, this is one piece of car art that’s a hands down winner.

V-Daub

(image via: Cartype)

As a great sage and eminent pitchman once said, “You know the Germans make good stuff”. They also have a thing for making their cars stand out in, ahem, unusual ways. Take this brace of Beetles, for instance, designed for the Volkswagen Olympic Art Car Campaign. Both full-size cars and fourteen 1:4 scale New Beetles were daubed up for display in a traveling show to help promote the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Exclusive Golf Club

(images via: VW Vortex and N1yln)

Any color you like, as long as it’s 4 colors… on each car. That’s what you’d get if you ordered a 1996 Harlequin Golf, one of the few painted art cars built for sale to the general public. Not al that many WERE built – 264 to be exact – but if you’ve ever seen a Golf with what seem to be mismatched body panels then that’s one mystery solved. If you actually own a Harlequin Golf, be sure to join the VW Golf Harlequin registry formed by Ross VW. Just 91 original Harlequins have signed up, plus one Harlequin wannabe in Japan who painted his regulation Golf in Ginster Yellow, Tornado Red, Chagall Blue and Pistachio Green just for the hell of it.

Harlequin Romance

(image via: Artcar)

Some folks really like the Harlequin paint scheme, so much that they’ll modify their own rides just to get that eye-catching, schizoid look. So-called Harlequin Wannabes are few and far between but if you do see one it tends to stick in your memory – which is likely what the owners have in mind.