Some years back the Portland Art Museum presented an exhibit The Allure of the Automobile; I sort of cracked up when I heard them talk in the clip below about how the museum was not geared for a sculpture exhibition like this. http://www.oregonlive.com/art/index.ssf/2011/06/allure_of_the_autombile.html

People flocked to see it.

Cars as art is one thing, cars in art another. They have, of course, played a role in art, like anything else that lends itself to iconography. Where the impressionists were passionate about trains, stations and ships, the car became of interest to those who soon followed. Futurists were fascinated by tempo

(Luigi Russolo, Dynamismus eines Automobils, 1911)

 

 

 

 

 

and artists of the school of Neue Sachlichkeit were attracted to the beauty in functional objects.  (Tamara de Lempicka, Selbstporträt im Auto, 1928)

 

Surrealists like Renee Magritte took it to another level. (The Wrath of the Gods, 1960)

 

 

 

 

 

 

More modern artists chose a different perspective, (and different sponsors, as one can see in the relationship between BMW and Rauschenberg. BMW SHOW CAR)

Warhol goes for the effect, as always, (Green Disaster, 1963)

 

and the German Martin Kippenberger (Capri bei Nacht, 1981) often talked about the destruction of our environment by automobiles.

And then there is street art:

These are of course just a small sample of what is out there, but I thought it was representative in the sense of how much terrain is covered.

The ultimate catalogue about cars and art can be found here: https://www.amazon.de/Das-Automobil-Kunst-1886-1986/dp/379130772X in connection with a centennial exhibition in Munich in 1986. Unfortunately all in German, but the 263 plates or so are perhaps of interest to car art lovers.