This year’s Concours d’Elegance Villa d’Este has a special display of race cars to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the iconic 24-hour Le Mans endurance race. On this occasion, BMW told us it will announce a new Art Car on June 28 at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Although the identity of the vehicle won’t be disclosed until then, it’s likely going to be based on a race car given the context.
What could it be? Provided we’re dealing with a current track-only machine from BMW Motorsport, there are only four possible options: M2 CS Racing, M4 GT3, M4 GT4, and the M Hybrid V8.
It’ll be the 20th official BMW Art Car since the original 3.0 CSL from 1975 penned by American sculptor Alexander. If BMW will pick the new M Hybrid V8 then it would serve as a spiritual successor to Jenny Holzer’s V12 LMR from 1999 – the year when BMW triumphed at Le Mans. 2024 will mark 25 years since the S70-powered race car took the overall win at the endurance race.
Not all BMW-backed Art Car projects have been based on track-only vehicles as relevant examples of road-going models include César Manrique’s 1990 730i, A.R. Penck’s 1991 Z1, and David Hockney’s 1995 850 CSi. You can check out most of the cars by using the free Acute Art app available on Android and iOS, with support for augmented reality for higher fidelity.
BMW is putting on quite the show at this year’s Concours d’Elegance Villa d’Este as aside from announcing that a new Art Car is coming, it has also unveiled the Z4 M40i-based Concept Touring Coupe. Other highlights include the i7 M70, an M3 Touring in Speed Yellow, and a one-of-a-kind M1 that originally belonged to M founder Jochen Neerpasch.
