This week kicked-off with the official Test Days ahead of this year's 24 Hours of Spa, the world's most famous race dedicated to GT3-spec racing cars. While a field of 50+ cars is expected to take on the mythical Spa-Francorchamps track in the Ardennes forest, one car, in particular, will stand out among all others, namely Boutsen Ginion Racing's BMW M6 GT3.

That's because the team's otherwise dull black livery with some orange accents has been ditched on this occasion for a rainbow-esque paint job designed by American artist Peter D. Halley. It's surely a case of love-it-or-hate-it.

This is one way to make sure your car will be noticeable on track

BMW is famous for its decades-long affiliation with some of the world's most famous visual artists that dates back to the '70s when art collector and racing aficionado Herve Poulain of France had the brilliant idea to get American sculptor and painter Alexander Calder to design the livery that would be seen by the entire world on a four-wheeled canvas: Poulain's BMW 3.0 CSL that he was slated to race in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Somehow, Calder agreed and then-BMW Motorsports boss Jochen Neerpash quickly understood how lucrative this idea could become, and thus a whole line of 'Art Cars' was born.

The first few BMW Art Cars raced at Le Mans including 1976's BMW 3.5 CSL Turbo with a livery penned by Frank Stella, 1977's BMW 320i that flew the colors of Roy Lichtenstein, or, maybe most famously, 1979's BMW M1 Procar that sported a color scheme that was hand-painted in merely a few minutes by Andy Warhol.

The livery, designed by Cao Fei, is only visible using augmented reality (AR).

There are simply too many to list here but one of the more interesting is the 2013 OAK-Pescarolo LMP2 race car that features actual metal signboards welded all over the bodywork adding 250 kilograms (551 pounds) to the prototype's weight. Artist Fernando Costa worked some 600 hours to finish the project. Four years later, French team Larbre Competition waved good-bye to its Corvette C7.R GTE race car by dressing it in a special glow-in-the-dark, comic-book-inspired livery for Le Mans.

Even artists associated with official Art Cars, such as Frank Stella, have created other artsy liveries for race cars outside of the program and, nowadays, you're bound to see an art car pop up at Le Mans almost every year.

This, you can argue, has diluted the concept as everyone can commission an artist - be it famous or not - and proceed to show up with a multi-colored or otherwise wacky livery that's sometimes more peculiar or ugly than kind to the eye. Having said that, the latest unofficial BMW Art Car is noteworthy for its scheme is the work of Peter D Halley, a New York-based artist famous for his colorful installation such as Heterotopia II. Halley tried to translate the style of works such as Heterotopia II, or Here and Now, Emulation, or Between Worlds onto the lines of the BMW M6 GT3.

While similar to the last official BMW Art Car to race at Le Mans, Jeff Koons' 2010 M3 GT2 whose color scheme was designed to make the car look fast while standing still, Halley's colorful blend of swooping lines stand apart in their own way as the tones are different. In any case, it's probably better than the last two official Art Cars that have used the M6 as a canvas - the Cao Fei M6 GT3 and John Baldessari's 2016 M6 GTLM.

We'll have to wait a little while to find out how the car fares in the race as the 2020 edition of the 24 Hours of Spa (that will actually run for an unprecedented 25 hours because of the end of Central European Summer Time) is scheduled for October 22-25. What we do know already is that the car can go fast since BMW factory driver Jens Klingmann clocked in the second-fastest lap time during the first day of testing. However, the car will run in the Pro-Am class meaning the other three drivers in the lineup, Karim Ojjeh, Gilles Vannelet, and Benjamin Lessennes, are semi-pros or amateurs who can't match Klingmann's pace. Still, if they stay out of trouble in a race that's bound to get really cold and really wet, this art car may end up towards the top half of its class.