BMW The 8X Jeff Koons
99 pop art balloons
BMW The 8X Jeff Koons
© press-inform – the press office
As if a BMW M 850i Gran Coupé wasn’t already exclusive, the best thing to do in view of the sharply rising prices is to speak to your bank advisor. Because the special edition of the BMW The 8 X Jeff Koons should only cost around 350,000 euros at the market launch. With just 99 vehicles produced, an impressive increase in value seems certain.
The BMW M 850i xDrive Gran Coupé is a spectacular car and currently probably the best way to drive a BMW. With the appropriate complete equipment, the four-door luxury coupé easily costs 150,000 euros. For a little more than double you get one of the 99 copies designed by star artist Jeff Koons. Given how much classic and limited-edition vehicles have appreciated around the world in recent years, the risk of investing in one of the rolling 99 Koons artworks seems manageable. If only because you get a 530 hp powerful eight with complete equipment that offers that certain something more, because this composition of colors and materials is not available in an 850, even after a long visit to the Garching individual manufactory.
“My edition of the BMW 8 Series Gran Coupé is my absolute dream car! I’ve always wanted to design a very special BMW and the project means a lot to me. The edition is sporty and eye-catching, but at the same time it is also minimalistic and conceptual,” explains US artist Jeff Koons describes the edition vehicle, “along the surface of the vehicle, the lines widen from the bonnet to the trunk, giving a sense of forward motion, just like the ‘POP!’ and the whirlwinds. The blue color is reminiscent of the vastness of space and I like the idea that the vehicle is homologated for the whole world.”
The appearance of the extravagant eight is already a show, because the various body elements with their eleven different colors were not pasted over, but were given their coloring in BMW’s Dingolfing paint shop. In total, the BMW M 850i Gran Coupé, which is more than five meters long, comes in eleven colors from blue to silver and yellow to black. The effort involved in manufacturing the 99 body shells was enormous, because outside of normal everyday operations, only four bodies could be painted per week. The creation of the multi-colored interior and embedded signature by Jeff Koons required hardly any less effort. The leather seats are decorated in strong red and blue tones, which are known from superheroes from the comic universe. There are also design elements from Pop Art and geometric patterns. The apparently exploding color lines at the rear pay homage to Jeff Koons’ BMW M3 Art Car from 2010. According to Koons, the “POP! Signet” on the side and the wind vortices symbolize the power and speed of The 8 X Jeff Koons .
Specialists at the BMW plants in Dingolfing and Landshut spent more than 200 hours of manual work on the exterior paintwork alone, where the elaborately created color samples were often applied with millimeter precision using magnifying glasses. “Dozens of our engineers and designers did their very best to celebrate our partnership and bring Jeff Koons’ vision to life,” said BMW CEO Oliver Zipse. The US artist himself spent several months on site at the Dingolfing plant to discuss the design options with the BMW employees involved. Jeff Koons: “I’ve been thinking hard about what makes this vehicle special. What does performance mean? How do you communicate something that stands for the overall power of the BMW 8 Series and also includes a human element?”
As early as 2010, Jeff Koons designed the BMW M3 GT2 Art Car, which took part in the 24-hour race in Le Mans and was previously unveiled as one of the numerous art cars in the Center Pompidou in Paris. After the unveiling in Los Angeles, the BMW The 8 X Jeff Koons will be on display in Manhattan at Rockefeller Plaza for the general public before a vehicle of the edition, signed by Jeff Koons on the tailgate, will go on sale at Christie’s auction house on April 4th. ‘s being auctioned in New York. All proceeds from the highest bid go to the International Center for Missing & Exploited Children. The edition model then goes on a tour of numerous art fairs and events in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, such as Istanbul Contemporary, Paris Photo, Goodwood Festival of Speed, Art Dubai, West Bund Art & Design Fair Shanghai or the Art Basel Hong Kong. And if you want to see more of the most exclusive of all BMW 8 Series models, you can purchase one of the 99 examples. There will still be a few models.