Rauschenberg BMW 635CSi Art Car Touches Down in Asia at Last

Robert Rauschenberg’s legendary BMW 635CSi Art Car is rolling onto Asian soil for the very first time as BMW presents the 1986 masterpiece at Art Basel Hong Kong 2026. Created nearly four decades ago, this rolling canvas fuses silkscreened photography, art history and everyday imagery across the bodywork of one of BMW’s most elegant grand tourers, and it remains one of the most striking vehicles ever to blur the line between automotive design and fine art. The occasion also marks the centennial of Rauschenberg’s birth, adding an extra layer of significance to a debut that art and car enthusiasts across the continent have long awaited.

Rauschenberg’s approach to the 635CSi was characteristically bold. He became the first artist to incorporate other creators’ works onto a BMW Art Car, silkscreening photographic reproductions of paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s collection onto the car’s flanks. The left side carries Angelo Bronzino’s Portrait of a Young Man from around 1530, while the right displays Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ Odalisque in Grisaille, dating to the 1820s and 1830s. Hubcaps bear images of antique plates, and layered throughout are Rauschenberg’s own photographs of trees and swamp grasses taken near his home on Captiva Island, Florida. The result is a vehicle that the artist himself described as a “drivable museum,” merging painting, sculpture and automotive engineering into a single moving statement.

The Hong Kong presentation sits within the broader BMW Art Car World Tour, an ambitious global programme spanning five continents throughout 2025 and 2026 to celebrate the collection’s 50th anniversary. Born from the vision of French racing driver Herve Poulain and BMW’s then Head of Motorsport Jochen Neerpasch, the Art Car series has grown into a cultural institution in its own right, uniting motorsport, technology and contemporary art in a way few other initiatives have matched. Earlier this year, David Hockney’s 1995 BMW Art Car was showcased at the inaugural Art Basel Qatar in Doha, and Hong Kong now takes its place as the next landmark stop on the tour.

Alongside the car itself, BMW’s dedicated lounge at Art Basel Hong Kong will feature a curated Rauschenberg display centred on a reproduction inspired by Automobile Tire Print, the artist’s large-scale 1953 work that explored movement, process and visual trace. A panel discussion titled “Robert Rauschenberg and the Velocity of Art” will bring together Russell Storer of M+, Courtney J. Martin of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and Prof Dr Thomas Girst of the BMW Group to examine the artist’s enduring influence on culture, technology and cross-sector collaboration. The event ties directly into the M+ exhibition “Rauschenberg and Asia,” further anchoring the presentation within its Hong Kong context.

For BMW, this appearance reinforces a cultural partnership with Art Basel that has run for more than two decades. More than just a showcase of artistic heritage, the 635CSi Art Car stands as a testament to the idea that a motor car can be far more than the sum of its mechanical parts. As it sits under the lights in Hong Kong, Rauschenberg’s vision of art in motion feels as relevant and powerful as it did when the paint first dried on that grand tourer’s body almost 40 years ago.