Taken from the Warhol Catalogue Raisonné:
Invited to participate in the project in April 1978, Warhol initially prepared five maquettes supplied by BMW. He spray-painted them black, covering both the front and rear windscreens, and rolled a pink floral design over them.
When Andy confided to his diaries that he hoped that BMW would “read meaning into” his black BMW “with pink roll-on flowers,” he was recognizing the subversive character of the floral design and its pink colour, the anti-machismo of his design for a race car.
There was, however, an obvious problem of functionality with Warhol’s maquettes: its ‘blackout’ windows would make the car impossible to drive. Instead of rejecting the maquettes outright, Poulain diplomatically proposed that Warhol paint a new model under development, the M1.
Warhol travelled to Germany in May 1979 and painted the car, assisted by his printer Rupert Jasen Smith, on May 17 in the paint shop of Walter Maurer in Hebertshausen, north of Munich. Maurer supplied the water-based dispersion paints Warhol used, selecting the colors according to a maquette that Warhol had previously painted in New York.
“I attempted to show speed as a visual image. When an automobile is really traveling fast, all the lines and colors are transformed into a blur,” Warhol said in explanation of his work.
Warhol exemplified this speed in his execution of the work. According to Maurer, it took the artist “around twenty-eight minutes” to paint the car, while a video crew filmed him. Warhol painted two additional spoilers in case the original was damaged during a race. After the car was painted, Maurer coated it with several layers of transparent sealer that took two days to dry. The completed car was displayed at the BMW headquarters in Munich on May 22, 1979, and driven in the endurance race, 24 Heures du Mans, the following month (June 9–10).
Warhol’s speed in painting the car was matched by its performance. The mid-engined car finished a creditable sixth place finish and second overall in its category, though Warhol did not attend the race to see such visual poetry in motion.
However, the Catalogue Raisonné reveals that while in Germany Warhol attended the opening of Indians, Porträts, Torsos, at Galerie Denise René Hans Mayer, Dusseldorf. And he also met Joseph Beuys on May 18 and visited Wieskirche, Linderhof Palace, and Neuschwanstein in Bavaria, the following day.
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