Art car collaborations are a long-standing and much-loved tradition at BMW. The BMW Art Cars first arrived in 1975 with French driver Hervé Poulain and founder of BMW Motorsport Jochen Neerpasch. Together they commissioned Alexander Calder to design Poulain’s race car and the very first official BMW art car was born. With 19 art cars now under the banner, in order to celebrate the 50th anniversary of BMW Group Cultural Engagement, the automaker has partnered with Acute Art to bring art cars to everyone via augmented reality.
Through the free Acute Art app (available on the Apple App Store and Google Play), users are able to view selected art cars as digital rolling sculptures thanks to the latest in AR technology. The stunning cars can be virtually staged wherever the users are located — be it indoors, out on the streets, or even in the wilderness, and can be individually displayed or placed together at the same time. As the actual art cars were scanned from all angles using a photogrammetry methodology with every detail of the livery captured, what users see in the app is a highly accurate representation of the cars.
The art cars available on the Acute Art app now included work by Alexander Calder (BMW 3.0 CSL, 1975), Michael Jagamara Nelson (BMW M3, 1989), Ken Done (BMW M3, 1989), Matazo Kayama (BMW 535i, 1990), Esther Mahlangu (BMW 525i, 1991), Jeff Koons (BMW M3 GT2, 2010) and John Baldessari (BMW M6 GTLM, 2016). More famous art cars will be added to the app every two weeks for your viewing pleasure.
