About

A Puma is a glassfibre (but not kit *) car built on VW Beetle running gear. Pumas were built in South Africa and in Brazil, with the designs drifting apart with time. (* Trivia: in the USA, Pumas were available in “kit” form to get around DMV regulations).

The first run of South African Pumas were built in Durban, and the second run in Verwoerdburg. The bodies for the first of the first run Pumas were imported from Brazil, after that the bodies were also built here. There were production changes along the way, like the wiper arm location, the long door / short door and the vents / rear quarter windows.

Bill Jackameit‘s production figures show that there were 357 first run and 26 second run Pumas built in South Africa, but recent work shows that the true first-run number was closer to 260. There were 21 733 Pumas built in Brazil, so they are much more common there than here.