Drip Car

About

Drip Car, also known as WhatsApp Car, refers to a photoshopped image of a BMW Z4 car used as an exploitable meme format. In memes, the BMW Z4 typically has its colors changed as well as various logos added to it referencing pop culture or other themes. The image is then set to various music, most commonly trap music, to create the remix video. While originally used with other mobile app logos and notification sounds, such as WhatsApp, it has expanded to be used with any logo and sound combination.

Origin

The photoshopped image that was used to create the Drip Car meme was posted on DeviantArt by user Scorpion87^[6], on March 23, 2007, and gained 2,000 views and 17 favorites (shown below).

The exact origin of the format is currently unknown. On July 16th, 2020, an unknown Redditor reposted the earliest found image of a Drip Car to the /r/islamborghini^[1] subreddit, with the post receiving 18 upvotes in six months (shown below). In this first iteration, the image used the Pakistani flag as an emblem on the BMW, and there was no music attached to it as seen in later variants.

The first use of this meme using social media logos came from the Facebook group WhatsApp Vermelho,^[2] where it was posted on December 21st, 2020 (shown below). Noticeably, this version has the WhatsApp logo but is not using the same green as the previous version, demonstrating that changing the color filter was also part of the template.

Spread

During April 2021, the meme began to spread mainly on Twitter with new color and sound combinations popping up each day. The most prominent example comes from the tweet by Twitter^[3] user @TheFunny_mp4 posted on April 21st, 2021, which received 84,400 thousand views, 11,200 likes and 2,100 retweets (shown below).

pic.twitter.com/zaoGQfyu4A

— The Funny (@TheFunny_mp4) April 21, 2021

Following this tweet, many more variations were made by others. Most resembled the original, being based on a mobile app, but it quickly spread to the point where the car edits were used with anything such as tech, games, countries, TV shows, brands and consoles. The YouTube channel WhatsApp Car^[4] started uploading different versions of the original meme, with Nokia Car being the earliest example, posted on April 19th, 2021, to 510 views (shown below).

Awesome Cars Website

On April 20th, 2021, a Neocities website titled Awesome Cars^[5] was published by Twitter user @ringoisnothere. The website is set up so every time the page is refreshed a different car from the site's archive will be shown, along with accompanying trap music.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References