Here's BMW M Hybrid V8 Art Car Nude in Carbon Fiber

There's a new BMW art car coming, once again a race car (like the first art car from Calder) and once again a top-flight prototype (like the V12 Le Mans Roadster from Jenny Holzer) and it's the M Hybrid V8, painted by Julie Mehretu.

Of course before the M Hybrid V8 can get painted, it must be a bare canvas, so we get to see the thing in its raw carbon weave. It's wonderful to see the plain shape of these cars, low and wide and flat. That BMW set the car up for its photo shoot at the base of the Guggenheim, a curlicue turned into a building, only makes it look lower and wider and flatter.

It's not like I dislike the paint scheme that these cars run on track, a pretty straightforward white background accented with the BMW M red/blue/purple. I hate to make this entire piece an aside, but the BMW M colors are themselves somewhat mercurial, as they originally were red, blue, and a slightly different blue (but not purple). What these colors stood for I myself was never able to find a clear answer about. BMW's own historian's official explanation makes little sense, saying that the blue stood for BMW, the red stood for Texaco, and the other blue stood for (??). This is slightly rebuffed as BMW race cars were backed by Castrol (which used green as its color) and it never inked a deal with Texaco (which ran red and black). From BMW: