King of Cool Racing Team NFTs Celebrate Steve McQueen and His Motorcycle-Painted Portrait

Back in 2022 Kalish came out with a portrait of Steve McQueen unlike any other. It's not that the painting shows the man known as the King of Cool in never-before-seen colors and settings, but because it was made not by using pencils and brushes, but a... real-life motorcycle.

Simply put, the artist laid down a giant canvas and covered it in wet paint. Then he had Chase McQueen, the actor's grandson, climb on the back of a Triumph Bonneville, and ride it all over the canvas in carefully planned moves for the effort to eventually come together as a portrait of the 1960s and 1970s icon.

When it was all said and done, the Bonneville too was painted, using a splatter technique, in the same colors as the canvas – resulting in a white, light blue, and yellow Triumph bike like no other.

As with any artwork, the Kalish portrait of McQueen is one-off, and can only generate so much money and can only be experienced in so many ways. The bike too, being unique, is not easy to access by most of us. Luckily, the modern world has those digital thingies not many of us understand called non-fungible tokens (NFT).

Inspired by the portrait and the painted Bonneville, Triumph announced today the launch of a collection of Triumph and Steve McQueen NFTs, each priced at $99.

The collection is called King of Cool Racing Team, and it's not an NFT that can only be admired in digital backrooms. Each of the 1,000 such NFTs to be made available are generative, interactive, and fully 3D 360 degrees.

The digital works of art were put together by Verified Labs and Immersive Enterprise Laboratories, and come into the world as a digital garage containing both the bike and the portrait, which can be experienced using a virtual reality headset.

Each of the 1,000 NFT garages is unique, despite generally showing the same things. That's because color variations have been used on a handful of elements in the garage, the bike itself, and the portrait.

Those who buy one of these digital works of art will have the option of generating their own related NFTs thanks to the option of combining no less than 42 unique attributes – a total of 141,120 new NFTs can be created like this, says Triumph.

Because it was made using the Unreal Engine, the garage and everything in it are 3D and can be viewed in 360 degrees. The bike itself is interactive, with people able to start the engine, put the machine in gear, and even do a burnout. The result of this latter action is the rear wheel spraying paint against the wall to reveal Steve McQueen's portrait.

All 1,000 King of Cool Racing Team NFTs will become available on July 14 on the ThetaDrop platform as the first of their kind to be released there. As said, each of them is priced at $99, but that will likely grow in time, as NFTs are known to do that.