In the annals of artifice-laden BMW race cars, the Homer E30 may stand alone, but the Bavarian concern itself holds a tradition of commissioning famed artists to gussy up its machines that dates back 41 years, to the mid-1970s, when first Alexander Calder and then Frank Stella painted 3.0 CSL cars for Hervé Poulain. Since then, art-world luminaries such as Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, and Andy Warhol?who regrettably didn?t live to silkscreen a banana onto Nico Rosberg?s Mercedes?have plied their trade on automobiles from Munich. Now it?s John Baldessari?s turn.

The 85-year-old Californian painter and conceptual artist once burned a collection of his early work and baked the ashes into cookies, a ferocious statement about loathing one?s past self while in the grip of a heavy jones for baked goods. Or something. That?s the explanation that we relate to, so that?s the explanation we?re going with. Baldessari?s M6 GTLM is being hailed as the 19th BMW Art Car; number 18, by Chinese artist Cao Fei, will be unveiled next summer. We can only presume the reversed chronology carries some artistic significance.
Alternately, we could be wrong. Perhaps it?s merely another example of Germany?s seeming desire to divorce itself from numeric characters with any foothold in reality, as the nation?s automakers have unmoored traditionally displacement-dependent model numbers from their cars? now downsized powerplants. We can?t wait for that trend to trickle down into engineering. ?Herr Prof...