• 1975 - The first BMW Art Car was born. It has been the product of the interest of Herve Poulain, a French auctioneer and racing driver, to both fine arts and racing. When he was to race a BMW 3.0CSL at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, he asked Alexander Calder to repaint his racecar just like in an abstract canvas. After sustained with powerful colors, the product became an immediate hit. From there, the trend has started.
• 1976 - Another craft has flourished. Pop artist Frank Stella repainted another 3.0SL in geometric grid patterns. He said, “My design is like a blueprint, an agreeable decoration, transferred to the bodywork.”
• 1977 - Comic-style artist Roy Lichtenstein made use of his “Benday dots” to a BMW 320i Group 5 racing car, which was later used by Poulain and Marcel Mignot to a class win, finishing 9th overall at Le Mans.
• 1979 – Pop artist Andy Warhol worked on a BMW M1 Group 4 racecar. He said, “I tried to portray speed pictorially… If a car is moving really quickly, all the lines and colors are blurred.” This was as he painted the actual M1, which was drove by Herve Poulain, Marcel Mignot and Manfred Winkelhock to 6th overall at Le Mans.
• 1980 – A BMW 635CSi was flamed by Austrian Ernst Fuchs’ artistic hands. He calle it “Firefox on Harehunt”.

- Australian Michael Jagamara Nelson painted the M3 Group A (won the Australian AMSCAR Championship) with earth-colored kangaroos, emus, ants and possums.
- Among other Art Cars created were those of artists Ken Done (Australia), Matazo Katayama (Japan), Cesar Manrique (Spain), A.R. Penck (Germany), Esther Mahlangu (South Africa), Sandro Chia (Italy), David Hockney (Great Britain) and Jenny Holzer (USA).

• 1999 – A BMW V12 LMR racecar was unveiled by Holzer. It was designed with political statement with graphically expressed slogans and ironic suggestions like “What Urge Will Save Us Now That Sex Won’t?”
• 2003 – Olafur Eliasson joined the line and created, “The Weather Project” from the hydrogen-powered BMW H2R record car, for London’s Tate Modern. He called his creation “Your Mobile Expectations”. It is what Henry Urback, SFMOMA’s Hilton curator of architecture and design calls, “an intimate, immersive and social engagement with the artwork.” He said, “The work is so much about an experience… You go into a cold space with a small group, almost like a little expedition. There you encounter something you’re never seen before that is completely magical. At the same time, it’s a serious and trenchant critique that leaves the beholder with plenty to think about.”