Welcome to the first part of my coverage of the 2025 London Concours!
The London Concours at the Honourable Artillery Company is an automotive garden party. It’s walking distance from Liverpool Street train station, always has an amazing assortment of cars and a fabulous atmosphere. It’s one of my favourite events of the year and one that I will always try to cover on this website.
Today we’ll be looking at ‘Art in Motion’ – a celebration of art cars.
Artists have been using cars as their canvas for decades. One immediately thinks of the psychedelic Volkswagens of the hippy movment in the 1960s or John Lennon’s famous Rolls Royce.
In a more corporate world, BMW have also commissioned vehicles since the 1970s as promotional pieces. Frank Stella’s graph inspired 3.0 CSL, Andy Warhol’s M1 and Jeff Koon’s M3 GT2 were art cars that both raced at LeMans.
It was Koons’ M3 that was the inspiration for the E87 116i. It competes in the GAZ Shocks 116 Trophy – a one make endurance series.
This GR Yaris is going to be a permanent display at Papple Steading – a holiday home in Scotland.
The car was initially prepared by Lanzante Limited in Hampshire. The design was done by visual artist Jaime Gili.
I loved the co-ordinated floor mats and the custom Papple Steading kick plates.
The Renault 4 Plen Air is an unusual car even in its standard form. This one has been painted by Dudley Edwards of Binder, Edwards and Vaughan (BEV), commission artists who were very popular back in the 1960s.
This Mercedes Benz 220A is a part of Hiro Yamagata’s “Earthly Paradise” collection – Earthly Paradise consists of between 20 and 30 (different sources give different numbers) of these 220 Mercedes.
As the cars are restored they are undercoated white, and then the artwork is put on by hand.
This particular car is called ‘Rose Garden’.
Finally we have ‘For Valour’ – a 1998 Vespa PX200. It was painted to commemorate the owners great grandfather Lance Corporal James Murray who won the Victoria Cross trying to save two wounded servicemen at Elandsfontein during The Boar War.
Thanks for reading.
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By Richard Francis
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