Volvo Gets An Art Car, Too

By Keith Barry
Article Source: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2011/03/volvo-gets-an-art-car-too/
Photo Source: Volvo

Volvo has joined the “art car” trend, lending a 2011 S60 to some street artists in Switzerland.

The all-white car was backed by a white canvas and placed in the central rail station in Zurich over the course of five days in February. During that time, over 35,000 commuters hurried by while ten groups of Swiss street artists painted and repainted the S60 and canvas.

The painting and the performance weren’t the only art forms on display, however. Every ten seconds, a camera mounted across from the exhibit took a photo of the artists’ accomplishments. One of the artists even took advantage of the time-lapse photography to turn the car into a massive stop-motion animation. After the final painting, all the photographs were compiled into a three-minute video, now online.

“Our intentions with this art project was to express and emphasize in a creative and innovative way the design of the Volvo S60,” said Volvo Cars Switzerland president Anouk Poelmann.

Volvo is only the latest automaker to join the trend of integrating cars and art, a medium pioneered by BMW when they commissioned Alexander Calder to paint a 3.0 CSL in 1975. Since then, everything from a Smart to a Tesla has been covered in paint, as other automakers catch on to the publicity an art car offers.