Every year the LA Auto Show attracts at least one monstrosity. For 2013 the award for most bizarre automobile goes to the blue beast dubbed the Youabian Puma. You probably can’t tell by the images, but the car is massive. The Hummer-sized convertible is more than 20-feet long, almost eight feet wide and rides on 20-inch chrome wheels wrapped in 44-inch rubber. The car’s creator is a LA-based plastic surgeon called Dr. K. Youabian. Hopefully, he does better work beautifying woman, because this odd-looking creature sure ain’t pretty.
Yes, for all the glamour of a new Porsche or Jaguar or video-game Mercedes, the car everyone couldn't stop talking about was a 20-foot-long piece of zaftig fiberglass that looks like no other car ever created — the Youabian Puma.
Built atop a steel and aluminum chassis with a fiberglass body, power comes from a 505-hp, 7-liter Corvette V-8, yoked to a six-speed automatic driving the rear wheels. The 20-inch wheels carry 44-inch tires designed for cruising the desert as much as the boulevard, although on pavement the Puma claims a 0-60 mph time of 5.9 seconds and, most shockingly, 22 mpg highway.
Custom-built luxury cars often turn out awful, and a professional vehicle designer who suggested a car like this would be given a drug test and told not to operate machinery, but the Puma galumphs through the valley of ugly to fascinating. In a time when regulations and business demands force designs into an ever-tighter envelope, the Youabain Puma demonstrates a passion for cars that most billion-dollar automakers only experience from memory. What else could anyone want from an exotic car other than being unforgettable?
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