BMW is commemorating 50 years of its groundbreaking Art Car Collection with a special livery for this weekend’s Bathurst 12-Hour race in Australia.
The no. 32 BMW M4 GT3 Evo, entered by Team WRT, will wear a design influenced by an Art Car with a deliberately Antipodean twist.
In 1989, Australian artist Ken Done used a BMW M3 Group A touring car as his canvas for the eighth vehicle in the Art Car Collection.
Said to represent modern Australia, Done’s design was unmistakably bold. The artist commented at the time: “I have painted parrots and parrot fish. Both are beautiful and able to move at fantastic speeds. I wanted my BMW Art Car to express the same qualities”.
The M4 GT3 Evo – driven by Jordan Pepper, Kelvin van der Linde and Charles Weerts – will wear a colour scheme almost identical to Done’s original for Sunday’s endurance race.
With the BMW Art Car Collection celebrating its 50th anniversary during 2025, the German manufacturer embarked on a World Tour to share its greatest moving artworks with the public.
This included an appearance at the 2025 Goodwood Revival, along with a more recent display at the 2026 Retromobile show in Paris.
Opting for a motorsport tribute livery seems particularly apt, as many of the first BMW Art Car designs were applied to racing cars.
The original Art Car, a BMW 3.0 CSL painted by Alex Calder, was entered into the 1975 24 Hours of Le Mans. Although it failed to make the finish of the French endurance classic, the excitement created by Calder’s dramatic design convinced BMW to commission more Art Cars.
Famous artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and David Hockney have all applied their own creativity to BMW models during the 50-year Art Car programme.
Ahead of the liveried M4 racing at Bathurst, Ken Done said: “I’m really looking forward to the weekend race to see the artwork for the BMW Art Car I painted brought to the racetrack.
“There’s no more powerful place for that than on a circuit like Mount Panorama. It is wonderful to see colour, energy and performance coming together again through BMW M Motorsport.”
Last year, BMW Team WRT scored an impressive 1-2 finish in the Bathurst 12-Hour event, with the no. 32 M4 GT3 claiming the top step on the podium, ahead of its no. 46 sister car.
BMW will hope the Australian-inspired livery helps to repeat the same success. The no. 32 BMW has set the fastest time in the first free practice session, so it certainly has enough speed to win at Mount Panorama this weekend.
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