Art on the racetrack, a supercar built for a one-make series, touring-car titles and a little Hollywood.
Alexander Calder’s 3.0 CSL started a collection that still races.
Racing driver Hervé Poulain proposed an artist-designed racing car. Alexander Calder created the first BMW Art Car on a 3.0 CSL in 1975; it went to the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The project grew beyond one artist or body style. Julie Mehretu’s BMW M Hybrid V8 became Art Car number 20 in 2024, continuing the connection between contemporary art and competition.
An M1 became the fourth BMW Art Car, then went racing at Le Mans.
Andy Warhol painted the BMW M1 himself in 1979. Instead of carefully disguising the brushwork, the finished car retained the marks of its making across its bright bodywork.
At that year’s Le Mans race, Manfred Winkelhock, Hervé Poulain and Marcel Mignot drove the Art Car to second in class. The work had a job beyond standing still.
The E30’s race story began with results, not a bigger badge.
The BMW M3 entered DTM in 1987. Eric van de Poele won the drivers’ championship in its debut season, establishing the new M3 as a touring-car contender immediately.
The racing car and road-going M3 belong to the same story, but their specifications are not interchangeable. The factory museum’s Group A record is the starting point for the competition version.
GoldenEye put the new Z3 in front of a global audience.
The first Z3 left BMW’s Spartanburg production line in September 1995. Two months later the roadster appeared in GoldenEye, with Pierce Brosnan playing James Bond.
It is a story about a model launch meeting popular culture. The pictured Z3 M is a later performance-family reference, not the film’s original car.
Car number 15 brought BMW to the top of Le Mans in 1999.
On 13 June 1999, the number 15 BMW V12 LMR won the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Yannick Dalmas, Pierluigi Martini and Joachim Winkelhock shared the winning car.
This was an open-cockpit racing prototype, not a modified production sedan. BMW’s contemporary race report records Martini taking the chequered flag after 365 laps.
The World Is Not Enough introduced another BMW roadster to the screen.
BMW announced the Z8’s role in The World Is Not Enough in 1999. Pierce Brosnan’s Bond would drive the roadster before it went on sale in early 2000.
BMW’s launch announcement connected the Z8’s proportions to the 507. It followed the Z3 in GoldenEye and the 750iL in Tomorrow Never Dies as part of BMW’s Bond appearances.