art

10 Coolest Art Cars of the Last Decade

By Michael J. Moody 7 months ago

The art car has a history of creating an avenue for car owners to express their individuality in the increasingly uniform nature of the automotive world. What began as a hippie movement in the late 1960s has transformed into auto brand sponsored art.

The content and meaning of these vehicles vary with each art car and often express political, social, personal or purely decorative themes.

Some art cars are seen as a popular movement engaged in rescuing the automobile from corporate uniformity, according to the Art Car Museum in Houston, while others represent how minorities, subcultures and modern artists influence the cultural life of the United States.

Scroll down to see some of the coolest art cars of the last decade.

Lamborghini Huricán EVO

Lamborghini Huricán EVO Art Car
Paolo Troilo was commissioned by the Italian carmaker to explore themes of man’s power and the car’s bull symbol using his fingers.
Automobili Lamborghini

Lamborghini commissioned

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The former McLaren designer whose automotive art gave him a new lease on life

By Michael J. Moody 9 months ago

After over a decade at McLaren, and a career that had seen him work on the P1, 570, 720S, and the new Artura, things began to unravel for Paul Howse.






© Provided by Hagerty


The high pressure of his job as Design Manager took its toll and in early 2020, Paul signed off work due to depression. Then, while his personal world was being turned upside down, the outside world followed suit as the pandemic hit. Initially he was put on furlough and, later in the year, along with 1200 other McLaren employees, he was let go.

Fortunately, by this time Paul had already begun his journey on the road to recovery by getting back to something he had loved doing since childhood—drawing cars.

Paul was born into the world of motorsport, often joining his father trackside, where he worked as an engineer on Spice’s Group C program

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The Stealthy Art of Ultra-Custom Car Sound Systems

By Michael J. Moody 1 year ago
Photo credit: Grant Cornett

Photo credit: Grant Cornett

From Road & Track

Matt Figliola is trying to sort the electronics on an Aston Martin Lagonda. This is no small challenge. The Lagonda, an outrageous four-door wedge of hubristically ambitious Seventies futurism, was the first car with a purely digital dashboard, a technological overreach that nearly bankrupted the company. The one he’s working on lacks the dreaded cathode-ray tube dash, and instead has the dreaded red LED matrix dash and an expansive smattering of disastrous touch-sensitive controls strewn around the cabin. “It’s all malfunctioning and will need rebuilding,” Figliola says. “And we will do some updating to the stereo for sure. This client almost always installs vintage McIntosh Car Audio in his cars. We have a small inventory that we service and keep for him.”

This story originally appeared in Volume 3 of Road & Track.

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Ian Byers-Gamber captures the art world from his car

By Jaime E. Love 2 years ago
Photographer Ian Byers-Gamber in his Honda, the vehicle that frames portraits he's shot during the pandemic. <span class="copyright">(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)</span>
Photographer Ian Byers-Gamber in his Honda, the vehicle that frames portraits he’s shot during the pandemic. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

How to shoot a photographic portrait in the age of contagion?

Proximity is risky. A sealed studio unimaginable. The very form — one person capturing the likeness of another in a shared space — has required an overhaul at a time when we shout at each other from a distance of six feet, surgical masks obscuring our expressions.

Artist Ian Byers-Gamber, however, has found a way to embrace these limitations and make some intriguing photographs in the process.

Since April, the Los Angeles artist has hit the town with a pair of bulky film cameras — a medium-format Mamiya RB67 and a large-format Chamonix 45F-2 — to make portraits of the city’s artists and arts workers at this moment in time. Serving as studio is his black Honda

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