Auto shows are a shell of what they once were, with way fewer automakers exhibiting at the convention centers and the ones that are there not necessarily using the opportunity to reveal something new. Porsche doesn’t even go to the Los Angeles Auto Show anymore, which left a big space open on the show floor for another brand to take. That brand is West Coast Customs, and while normally I would’ve briefly walked through, seen their awful builds and left, yesterday I spent about 30 minutes staring at a car they had on display: The chopped-up Maybach 57S from Kanye West and Jay-Z’s “Otis” music video.
A track from Ye and Jay’s excellent 2011 collaborative album “Watch the Throne” that sampled namesake Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness,” the music video for “Otis” was directed by Spike Jonze and released on August 11, 2011. In the video, Kanye and Jay-Z chop up and modify the Maybach with saws and other power tools before drifting it around a shipping yard. It’s epic, and it broke the internet (especially the automotive side of it) when the video first dropped. The song also happens to have one of the best automotive bars ever: “They ain’t see me ‘cause I pulled up in my other Benz, last week I was in my other other Benz.”
I’m honestly shocked that the Maybach is still around. The car was sold as part of Phillips de Pury & Co’s New York Contemporary Art Evening auction the following year, where it hammered for $60,000 despite its $100,000 to $150,000 estimate (and the car having a retail price three times that figure). At least all that money went to charity.
It’s unclear when West Coast Customs acquired the Maybach or what the car has been up to in the decade since the music video dropped, but it looks exactly as it did back then. It’s a completely wild thing to behold, with so many funny details to take in like the hood being used as a trunk and the trunk being used as a hood. It certainly doesn’t look very safe, but at least there seem to be some chassis reinforcements. I’d rock the hell out of it — if it even still runs, that is. If it doesn’t, how hard could it really be to make it roadworthy again?
If you find yourself in Los Angeles between now and December 1, go to the auto show. Even if all that you see is the Otis Maybach, it’ll be worth it. There are admittedly a couple other cool things in the WCC booth, like Paris Hilton’s pink Bentley Continental GT (that she still owns!), and the main show itself actually saw the debuts of a bunch of interesting new models. Nothing is as cool as the Maybach, though.
