Artist Jeff Koons creates BMW's most elaborately designed car, with only 99 units being made

Los Angeles

Jeff Koons, an American artist best known for works like Balloon Dog has collaborated with BMW to create the brand’s most elaborately designed vehicle in its history — The 8 X Jeff Koons. Only 99 units of the M850i xDrive Gran Coupe will be produced for sale.

Koons describes the BMW 8 Series as his “dream car”, enjoying it for its “sporty and flashy as well as minimalist and conceptual” style. The exterior design was conceptualised over a period of many months, ultimately resulting in the visual feast you see below.

Following design confirmation, Koons travelled to the BMW Group Plant Dingolfing on multiple occasions to work on bringing the design to life. Oliver Zipse, Chairman of the Board of Management of BMW AG described Koons’ creation as “a rolling sculpture”.

[embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/CaEwS68oywX/[/embed]

Koons’ design features 11 different colours on its exterior and requires over 200 hours of work alone. The exterior pays homage to Koons’ first collaboration with BMW and symbolises the power and speed of The 8 X Jeff Koons. Production is slated to begin this month at Plant Dingolfing and a whopping grand total of only four cars will be painted each week.

The interior seats are made up of red and blue reminiscent of classic comic book superheroes and BMW M, their high performance unit. Koons’ design incorporates pop art elements and geometric patterns that accentuate the 8 Series Gran Coupe’s contours.

The 8 X Jeff Koons is the artist’s second collaboration with BMW, the first being the BMW M3 GT2 Art Car. The M3 was also the 17th car designed in BMW’s Art Car Project, alongside artists like David Hockney and Andy Warhol.

[embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/CaIdH9PFuli/[/embed]

The 8 X Jeff Koons will be on display in Manhattan, New York City at Rockefeller Plaza before being auctioned off with proceeds going towards the nonprofit NGO International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC) that Koons has been personally involved with for over 20 years.

Due to its strictly limited-edition nature of 99 units only, we here in Singapore likely won’t be seeing The 8 X Jeff Koons on our shores.

READ ALSO: Budget 2022: From BMWs to Lamborghinis, 220% ARF tax rate to drive up prices of luxury cars

This article was first published in CarBuyer.