An art car is a vehicle that has had its appearance modified as an act of personal artistic expression. Art cars are often driven and owned by their creators, who are sometimes referred to as "Cartists". Most car artists are ordinary people with no artistic training. Artists are largely self-taught and self funded, though some mainstream trained artists have also worked in the art car medium. Most car artists agree that creating and driving an art car daily is its own reward. Artists like Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol and others have designed BMW Art Cars and their work has been reflected in racing cars like the BMW V12 LMR. History The art car subculture started with several influences - the hippie-themed VWs of the late 1960s, the lowrider, as well as a Merry Pranksters' creation, the decorated school bus known as Furthur. During the late 1960s, singer Janis Joplin had a psychedelically-painted Porsche 356 and John Lennon, a paisley Rolls-Royce. Partly in imitation, the late 1960s/early 1970s counterculture featured many painted VW Buses (sometimes with a peace symbol in place of the giant VW logo) and customized vehicles (e.g. a customized 1977 Cadillac Fleetwood seen in the film Escape from New York). Likewise, as a way of evading The Muppet Movie's main antagonist "Doc Hopper", Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem paint up the borrowed 1951 "bullet-nose" Studebaker Commander two-door owned by Fozzie Bear's uncle in a psychedelic manner, for Fozzie and Kermit the Frog to escape safely, at least for a while. Artist Larry Fuente was among the first to take motorized appliqué to the limit with his "Mad Cad." Later, artists David Best and Jackie Harris contributed their works to the art car world. An art car community began to cohere in the 1990s, inspired by movies and books with a wide underground following, and the development of innovative art display venues such as Burning Man. One of the main forces behind this is filmmaker and art car artist Harrod Blank, who created the art car documentaries Wild Wheels (1992), Driving The Dream (1998) and Automorphosis (2009). He also published two books Wild Wheels (1993, 2001) and Art Cars: the cars, the artists, the obsession, the craft (2002, 2007, 2012) Blank also co-founded with Philo Northrup the U.S.'s second largest art car festival in the San Francisco Bay Area: ArtCar Fest. Today many cars are covered by local