I love cars that have a very specific audience in mind. And the Youabian Puma certainly has that: wealthy men who are sexually aroused by the idea of crawling inside a whale carcass on a truck trailer. For those of you who fit that description, this is a fantastic time to be alive.
The Puma is on display here at the LA Auto Show, and if you're a budding anthropologist, you should set up a hidden spot by the car to catalog "What the fuck?" expressions and mannerisms in people of all creeds and cultures. You can't walk by this monster without doing a double-take, mostly because the scale of the thing is so far beyond what you've grown to expect by the idea of "car."
It's huge. Insanely huge. I got that nice lady in the top shot there to stand by it so you can get an idea of the scale of the thing. It's bloated and massive in every possible way, except for, as far as I can tell, the actual interior.
The brochure says
The Youabian Puma was created with one goal in mind:
to standout and be unique.
And, as far as that goes, it's an unqualified success. Then again, Sasquatch is an unqualified success based on those standards. And, like Sasquatch, this thing is a one-of-a-kind monster only a true loon would want to be seen riding into town. And it looks like it handles about as well as a Sasquatch, too.
It's like if you took all the bad ideas about the Nissan Murano Cabriolet — oversized, limited space, undesirability, with a convertible top — and then multiplied them by batshit. Ugly doesn't even come close to describing this thing — it's terrifying, in a primal way. It's like if a an elephant with elephantiasis got a vivid blue paintjob and then set out to systematically murder all of LA.
It could be mid-engined, based on the proportions, but there's plenty of room up front for the 505 HP 7L V8 that I think is a GM LS7, but I'm not sure. The rear could be housing the mechanism for the retractable roof, too. Or it could house the portal into hell from whence this beast sprang. Either way would be awesome.
They claim a 0-60 time of 5.9 seconds, but there's an asterisk by that, which I think means it can only do that in the parallel universe where this thing is a good idea.
This colossal, overwrought, mutated beast seems to be the work of a Dr. K Youabian, who may be Dr. Kambiz Youabian an LA-area cosmetic surgeon. I don't yet have absolute proof this is the same person, so I'll let you readers come to your own conclusions about standards of beauty and all that.
I hope that the Youabian motor company will be willing to loan me a Puma for a full review. While it's an absolutely horrifying beast, I kind of love that it exists, and I'm pretty sure driving it around would be an experience on par with unicorn ownership.
Also, I think those are Buick Enclave taillights on there. That will be important so you can avoid these even in the dark.