Back in the 1970s, the French racer Herve Poulain came up with the great idea to have an American artist paint his car. Instead of choosing someone who would do a relatively standard, acceptable, and OK job, he chose Alexander Calder, who created the memorable piece of work you see above. Although Calder died just a year later, he started a movement in art and car design that continues to this day.

While it’s not a grand, sweeping, big-time art trend, it is something that marries the otherwise little connected worlds of professional racing and contemporary art. Although many modern car designers can rightfully be called artists, and many of the designers as far back as the 1950s were creating cars that still look like masterpieces today, it wasn’t until this pairing that we started to see the car-as-canvas.

BMW decided to remain in the spotlight, and comissioned several other prominent artists to do their own cars. Not only are the cars themselves fantastically adapted to this sort of thing (there’s just something about that 1970s BMW racing design that holds a coat of unconvential paint so much better than, say, a Porsche), but the works of art created are quite memorable, too.

Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, and Andy Warhol all contributed work, and at the moment there are only 16 of these BMW art-cars in total. They’ve recently been sent on tour, and after short residences in Korea and Russia, they’re currently in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. They’re staying just until February 24th, after which they’re headed to New York and Mexico.

These cars are normally on display at the BMW museum in Munich, and the coolest thing about them is that most were actually used in races. I would pay to see someone racing an Andy Warhol car, I would, even though the Frank Stella one (above) is actually the most impressive.

This put me in mind of some other recent “art cars” we’ve seen, and we thought it a good idea to round them up here:

The aforementioned Ferrari Testarossa from 1957 isn’t an art car, but it should be. Just look at that detailing: it’s a 1950s (Italian) idea of what the future would look like, except it hasn’t gone out of style in any way.

Some recent new forumla 1 rules mean that the cars have to be completed redesigned, but look, the McLaren team car actually looks pretty awesome! Straight out of the damn future, I say.

Chris Gilmour has done up some very fine cardboard models of the Fiat 500 and the Aston Martin DB5. No, these aren’t just little models, which wouldn’t be much of anything to pay attention to—these are full-sized recreations.

Here’s artist Romero Britto’s take on a recent Audi model. At the time Jalopnik reported on it, it was available for sale in Miami. Definitely inspired by the BMW cars, it doesn’t quite reach their level, but isn’t bad.

This one was pretty famous in the blogosphere last year: a Lamborghini made entirely of steel tubing. It’s amazing, because the photos look exactly like something done up in a 3d program, and then inserted into real-life photos, except the entire thing is real-life.

Any more amazing combinations of art & cars you know of? Let us know!

I once had a Peugeot. No, not a car, but a street bike I bought for $80 at a garage sale. It was the best bike I’ve ever owned. A friend of mine had the exact same one, and we used to call them… wait for it… twin cobras. I have no idea why we came up with that name, or what the hell a snake and its brother had to do with an elegant French bike from the 1970s, but it made a fun bike even better.

Now I’m largely exposed to Peugeot through their numerous cars here in Europe, although for months I was confused by the Italian pronunciation, thinking these people were talking about some other, mysterious brand I couldn’t spell, and frankly I’m still not sure exactly how to say the name at all. Most likely my French Canadian education has had me pronouncing the name wrong all along, so what I thought was poo-zho is probably pyoo-zho or per-zho. Sometimes I don’t really know what the hell I’m doing.

Since phonetics prevents me from saying their name right and my driving license is no longer valid here, the only reason I’m writing about Peugeot is because their latest Design Competition caught my eye. From their site:

Create a Concept Car which is designed to evolve within the cities of the future, whilst retaining the key values of the 21st century. The projects should bear Peugeot’s stylistic codes and must contain the following four aspects included in this design competition: environmental awareness, social harmony, interactive mobility and economic efficiency.

They narrowed it down to ten finalists that you can view right here, and just recently chose their winners. In third place was China’s Lou Ke, who designed a sort of scissory-double-motorcycle thing. His wacky writeup:

I don’t think this type belonged “20?” “30?” or “90?”,so i give the name “x0x”,but the car shape is more like “oxo”,so it is. A electric power car.

The car looks like a toy,because the color is no stress just like tomorrow life,naive and freedom.

Then you must drive a car with out learning how to drive it. The “oxo” is one of this type.

Drive the car is easy than in games,with the “PEUGEOT Phone” help,the car can be controled or autorun. The “X” system inside is save the space when the car parking,and through narrow or crowded street. The car wheel allowed the car lateral movement,rotate in-situ,and so on..

With the nimble and smart friend help,you must have a perfect tomorrow.

Second place went to Emre Yazici of Turkey, with a sort of single-passenger two-wheeled car that isn’t a motorcycle and fits right with Minority Report. He says:

Peugeot EGO has been conceived as a lean vehicle in every aspect. It is easy to own, easy to maintain, and easy to operate. And, most importantly, it is easy on the environment. The majority of the vehicles at the rush-hour in a big city, carry a single passenger. EGO is designed for a single passenger [...] Steering is performed by independently changing the rotational speed of the wheels. So, u-turns at the same spot is possible. The agility of EGO has virtually no match. Say good-bye to the clumsy and unsafe steering wheel, and also to the pedals. The driver employs a joy-stick to perform the manoeuvres, and to control the speed simultaneously.

And our winner is Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar of Colombia, with his design called the RD, which is easily the best-realized out of all the entries. I’m not one that’s always too crazy about futuristic, curvaceous, speculative-looking design, but this is real nice. Unfortunately his writeup is entirely in Spanish, but it’s OK, the pics and video are more than sufficient.

You can see all the winners at Peugeot’s (that’s pronounced pee-you-gee-ott, I’ve decided) website, right here.