And You Thought That The Panamera Was A Porker

Ronnie Schreiber
by Ronnie Schreiber

Austrian artist Erwin Wurm may stretch the concept of sculpture but you can’t deny that the man has a sense of whimsy. Though the basic concept of art cars appeals to me, the execution often has a whiff of hostility to the automobile that this car enthusiast can’t stomach. That notwithstanding, when I first saw a photo of one of Wurm’s Fat Car series, I couldn’t help but smile. After all, we enthusiasts often complain about how manufacturers we once admired have allowed their cars to get bloated and heavy.

How can you not give at least grudging props to a man, in Austria of all places, where Dr. Porsche spent his early career, who has the blasphemous audacity to turn a Porsche into a real Porker? More than a decade ago Wurm started out with smaller fat car sculptures, sort of scale models. One small Fat Car sold for 55,000 Euros in 2009. Wurm then moved on to a full size Fat Car, working with Opel engineers. Wurm told an interviewer that he had hoped to end up with with something that combined something biological with something mechanical, but according to the artist Opel’s digital design equipment could not render the “natural” looking shapes that he was looking for, so he decided to start with an already assembled car, in this case a Porsche cabriolet. Working with expanded polyurethane and polystyrene foams covered with laquer, Wurm debuted the “Fat Convertible” Porsche in 2004. Since then he has made other Fat Cars.

Mr. Wurm seems to like using things automotive as an artistic medium. In 2005, Wurm created a work titled Truck, an Isuzu medium duty whose bed can rest against a wall.

After bending a truck, in 2006 he made a bent bus, a VW Transporter that thinks it’s a caterpillar, titled Telekinetically Bent VW Van.

You can check out more of Erwin Wurm’s art at his minimalist website.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can dig deeper at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading– RJS

Ronnie Schreiber
Ronnie Schreiber

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, the original 3D car site.

More by Ronnie Schreiber

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  • Speed Spaniel Speed Spaniel on Jul 30, 2012

    Eeek! The red car image brings back the terrible memory of me accidentally walking in on a 400 lb+ fat lady in a public restroom on the Island of Sardinia. Thanks for the memories, you've erased countless therapy sessions.

  • Bob Bob on Jul 30, 2012

    It looks like the Care Bears car!

  • TheMrFreeze That new Ferrari looks nice but other than that, nothing.And VW having to put an air-cooled Beetle in its display to try and make the ID.Buzz look cool makes this classic VW owner sad 😢
  • Wolfwagen Is it me or have auto shows just turned to meh? To me, there isn't much excitement anymore. it's like we have hit a second malaise era. Every new vehicle is some cookie-cutter CUV. No cutting-edge designs. No talk of any great powertrains, or technological achievements. It's sort of expected with the push to EVs but there is no news on that front either. No new battery tech, no new charging tech. Nothing.
  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
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