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Replica builders are an odd breed — as dedicated to their craft as those guys who once built ships in bottles. A Florida man built this "Bugatti Veyron" from a Mercury Cougar, and it can be yours for $89,000. More »
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In 1974 the Mercury Cougar and the Oldsmobile Cutlass were two strong contenders in the midsized luxury class. As this vintage Car and Track comparison shows, what these two cars lacked in performance they made up for with nice interiors and semi-acceptable handling. More »
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Singer and vintage muscle car enthusiast Neko Case is raffling off her '67 Mercury Cougar to benefit the 826 National educational writing group. Questions about the car? Questions about her music? You can ask her, here, tomorrow at 12:00 EST. More »
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The '71-'73 Cougar is the last one you could honestly call a pony car, although its size makes it pretty horsey. Today's Nice Price or Crack Pipe XR-7 puts its top down, but will its price make you pony up? More »
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Superstar commenter mytdawg was shopping for wheels over the weekend and spotted this gem of a jalopy: the hind-end of a Mercury Cougar mated to what look like Honda forks, all powered by a GM V8. Excellent. Details below More »
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After a few years of double-digit annual inflation in the late 1970s, Americans had become accustomed to Malaise Era interest rates. That's why Mercury's offer of a mere 12 percent APR sounded pretty good. More »
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Malaise Era engine power numbers always provide entertainment, especially when you consider that the 134-horse 302 engine was the 1980 Mercury Cougar's optional V8. The standard 255 made 119 horsepower. Meow! More »
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The 1977 Mercury Cougar's a masterpiece of malaise-era bloated excess. What better way to improve upon perfection but by festooning an example with murals of cougars? The answer is there's no better way to improve a 1977 Cougar. More »
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Sure, the 1968 Cougar was really a Mustang with 400 pounds of additional Mercury gingerbread, but just look at it! More »
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First generation Mercury Cougars, that is. With the electric shaver grille. That object on the side of the picture you’re currently not looking at. Hard to say, now, hard to say! More »
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I've been hitting the junkyards quite frequently of late, searching for interesting Cash For Clunkers victims, and some heartbreaking non-clunkers are showing up as well. For example, this Cougar. More »
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Actually, we have no idea what possessed the owner of this Audi R8 to paint a cougar on the hood, so we're just guessing that he needed to learn to to drive with his fear. More »
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Automakers have been turning lately to sexy older women, a.k.a "cougars," to sell their cars. These "spokescougars" appeal to jean short-wearing moms seeking to feel sexy again and men seeking experienced ladies. Our seven favorites below. More »
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One of our favorite albums this year is Neko Case's Middle Cyclone — and not just because of her booming voice. At 39, she's just barely a cougar, but what she's sitting on definitely is. More »
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Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. Everyone loves the Mercury Cougar, right? More »
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Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. We've seen a few Alameda Cougars so far, including this '67 (which later turned up in the wrecking yard), this '68, this '73, and this '75. Now we're going to look at a first-gen Cougar that's lived in the same neighborhood since I was a kid.
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It was mighty nice of Ford to wish GM a happy 100th birthday by strategic window-blind arrangement on their office building, but things weren't quite so friendly back in the days before the imports grabbed a huge slice of the car-sales pie. Back in '66, when the Mercury Division was gearing up to release the Cougar, they projected a huge Cougar ad… on the side of GM's Detroit headquarters! GM could have retaliated by using gasoline to burn a big Camaro ad into Henry Ford II's lawn, but they took the high road. Thanks to Mark for the tip. Image credit: CoolCats.net. More »
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Perhaps this ad is a bit lighter on the cocaine than the Hot Stuff '81 Mustang ad, but we're talking a few grams at most. Otherwise, it's all there: high heels, polyester, anorexia, miserable engine outputs... and the Ford Fox platform. The sad thing is that the Cougar's (claimed) 34 highway MPG would be pretty decent among the bloatmobiles that pass as "economy" cars today. More »
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Remember the 1967 Mercury Cougar we saw down on the Alameda street, just a little over a week ago? Well, I was shopping for some race-car pieces at an Oakland self-service junkyard yesterday when I spotted a primer-black Cougar that looked very familiar. Yes, just weeks after this 41-year-old car had been holding the Mercury flag high, that mean ol' tow truck hauled it away (I took the photographs in late July). I suspect the car was bought by the owner of the beater '68 Mustang as a parts car and then scrapped after being picked over like a leftover Thanksgiving turkey. Make the jump to see all the photos, before and after. More »
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Welcome to Down On The Street, where we admire old vehicles found parked on the streets of the Island That Rust Forgot: Alameda, California. The Cougar wasn't just a rebadged Mustang, Torino, Thunderbird, or Contour- it was a legend! We've seen a few Alameda Cougars, including this '68 (which won the Favorite DOTS Mercury poll), this '73, and this '75, but we're overdue for another one. How about a mean-looking first-year example, complete with primer and missing lug nuts?
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Yesterday, we saw the Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 Hell Project competition go to the '72 Volvo 1800ES by a Nixon-over-McGovern-style landslide, with 73% of the vote favoring the Volvo over the '72 Cougar. Today we're going to punish reward Graverobber for his run of incredible PCH tirades (such as this one, this one, or- my personal favorite- this one) by making him work harder for a PCH Tipster T-shirt than anyone else ever has. The deal I made with him: he chooses the cars, he writes the tirade for the cars, I include the tirade in the post... and everyone wins! Well, except for those who grumble about seeing Mercury Cougars in two consecutive Choose Your Eternity challenges, that is, but we'll pay that price. More »
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In possibly the most humiliating defeat for France since the whole Algerian débâcle, a French car lost a Project Car Hell challenge to American machinery, with the '61 Simca Aronde getting crushed beneath the rusted hulks of a pair of Lincoln Continentals... and that's with the Simca getting some help from one of the finest PCH commenter tirades we've ever seen (notice hereby given: Graverobber has raised the Commenter Tirade Bar to hitherto unprecedented levels). We'll need to give France a chance to regain its former PCH glory very soon, but we're going to get all political-journalist on your ass with today's choices. More »
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The Mercury Cougar has been reinvented many times, but we've only seen a couple of incarnations in this series. We've seen the lean and mean '68 Cougar and the Bloated Final Year Of The Rebadged Mustang Cougar, but what about the Farrah Fawcett-Approved Cougar? I found this appealingly rough '75 parked across the street from the '82 280ZX Turbo and quite close to one of Alameda's non-Buick Skyhawks. More »
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You want to drive a car powered by the most reliable automobile engine ever produced, you want to burn non-petroleum fuel, yet you don't want to drive a boring ol' Mercedes sedan like every other anti-dinosaur-juice diesel demon in town? Loyal reader Vance has pulled our coat about this '67 Cougar with a freshly rebuilt turbo-equipped Mercedes-Benz OM617 installed; this setup looks like it was done right, though the price seems on the painful side and the performance is likely more tortoise than hare (albeit a tortoise that could win a 500,000-mile race with ease). [Craigslist Los Angeles] More »
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The cage door creeeeeaks open, (perhaps suggesting the rust that will soon assail most Malaise Lincolns and Mercuries), and the angry mountain lion struts out into a field full of parked cars. The Continental... the Marquis... Montego... Comet... Cougar... they're all here, and they're all packing more bloat and less power than ever before. More »
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While Farrah Fawcett merely allowed a cougar to sit on the roof of her car in her '75 Cougar ad, Cheryl Tiegs lets a mountain lion ride shotgun in her '78 (equipped with the hyper-Malaise "Midnight Chamois" option package). Not only that, but her hair totally out-feathers Farrah's, and her haunted mansion gives her more of an air of mystery. Did we mention the 134-horse 302 that came standard in this 3,800-pound car? More »
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Whereas we like to think Jalopnik is a fairly safe and friendly place to express an opinion, niche forums can be brutal. Take the story of one young man and his last generation Mercury Cougar at the New Cougar forums. We know it can't be easy to be a Cougar owner — who do you have to look down on? Topaz owners? Nevertheless, these fan-boys soldier on and learn to squeeze every bit of love and performance out of their cars, which is something we can respect. But this guy's ride we can't respect. He's basically taken plywood and home theatre controls and shoved them in the backseat of his car (something you can do if you have no friends). The execution is so poor that it makes you start to appreciate the ridiculous import tuner crowd. But as harsh as we could be, our pithy comments are nothing compared to the ire directed at him by his fellow Cougar fan-boys. We've included a selection of said comments below the jump. More »
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During the discussion of my wall-hung '56 Chevy hood ornament yesterday, some readers wanted to know how it's possible that a guy who spends as much time in junkyards as I do hasn't managed to build up a suitably awesome emblem collection. Well, I do have quite a few Leaping Impala emblem, and I also have a smattering of other small emblems I've pried off junked cars over the years. For whatever reason, I've mostly grabbed cats and Cadillacs, with a bunch of Cougars, a Jaguar, and a Wildcat in addition to the Caddy crests. What will I do with them? Any ideas? More »
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How is it that I've only had one Mercury Cougar in this series so far, and that a Malaisemobile? Even worse, we forgot about all about the 40th anniversary of the Cougar last, in spite of repeated reminders from the Colorado Cougar Club! Maybe the problem is that the bloat-o-riffic Farrah Fawcett Cougar managed to obscure our mental images of the sleek 60s cats. Anyway, I've photographed several of the sporty Mustang-based Cougars on the island and you'll be sure to see them in this series, starting with this '68. More »
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A Mercury Cougar station wagon, you say? Yes, Cougar wagons really exist, and we aren't talking about homemade ones welded together by the wild-eyed freaks who build stuff like the Cyclonechero. In 1977, you could buy a Cougar-branded LTD wagon, and a Fox-based Cougar Villager wagon was available in '82. Thanks to Cougar expert Mark for the tip! [LTD Sightings] More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=359000&view=rss&microfeed=true In 1978, Mercury was looking to sell 200,000 new cars in six weeks, and that meant their "Personal Car" was needed to lead the way. We're not quite sure what's so personal about it, but it's boldly styled with a handsome new grille! Sure, it's a little more, uh, substantial than its 60s forebears, but those small Cougars were a little too impersonal for car buyers' tastes. Keep watching when the ad is done, because you get a bonus Old Milwaukee Beer ad, complete with Louis Armstrong impersonator and general Malaise-y goodness all around. More »
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]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=297589&view=rss&microfeed=true We were reminded of the incredible goodness of the three-stage sequential turn signals used by late-60s/early-70s Mercury Cougars after seeing the '73 Cougar DOTS car a week ago, so a little digging on the Tube That Is You and voila! The mechanism behind the magic was actually a failure-prone motor-driven mechanical device, apparently derived from pinball-machine technology, but the many-moving-parts analog beauty of it all just makes this feature that much cooler. More »
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Poor Cougar, always forgotten in the big shadow of its Mustang sibling! I found this car parked just down the street from the '61 Valiant of a couple weeks ago. More »
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In yet another example of a car pinning someone ejected from their own car (and not wearing a seatbelt again), a drunk Wisconsin teenager was freed from underneath his girlfriend's Mercury Cougar by a local woman and her brother-in-law with a floor jack. The best part of this story, other than the kid surviving, is the quote from the nice woman who saved the kid: "We just kind of eased him out of there. He was really alert. He was determined... he wanted that car off his legs." Now that's what we call an understatement. Let this be a wake-up call for some of you, if you're going to drive without a seatbelt make sure you get launched at least 100 yards from the car for your own safety. – Matt Hardigree More »
]]> http://jalopnik.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=250065&view=rss&microfeed=true Moon roof! Glove-soft vinyl upholstery! Clustered gauges! Mountain lion stalking you! No wonder Farrah drove (or at least shilled for) the '75 Cougar. And for you fans of engines that take two cubes to make less than a single horsepower, the optional 460 wheezed out a spectacularly miserable 216 horses. – Murilee Martin More »
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You hear a lot of whining from Mustang aficionados about the terrible things that Ford did to the Mustang starting in '74. But what about the Mustang's long-suffering sibling, the Cougar? A hastily rebadged Torino for '74 through '76, then a hastily rebadged Thunderbird for the '77-'79 models, the Cougar's incoherent branding and third-fiddle status became a cherished Ford tradition lasting into the 21st century. Still, the '77 Cougar has a certain malaise-era decadence about it; it's easy to picture Debbie Harry rolling in the back of one, stubbing out her smokes on the Simu-Leather upholstery and cursing drunkenly at the driver. – Murilee Martin More »
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One of the cooler looking alt-vehicle modes for a Decepticon in the new Transformers movie is a baddie by the name of Bonecrusher. Boney's vehicular disguise is a Buffalo H mine-protection vehicle, designed by the folks over at Force Protection, Inc. to sift through the dirt and rubble to find little explosive devices and let them detonate safely on the bad-mutha-trucka's super-reinforced skin. Obviously, these things are selling like hotcakes to the US Armed Forces, but the company also has a contract with the Army for a smaller version of the vehicle designed for troop transport — it's called the "Cougar." The Cougar is is a family of mid-sized mine-protected vehicles coming in either a 4X4 or 6X6 layout. The tank-sans-turret can be configured for a wide range of tasks including troop transport (up to 12 in the 6X6), command and control, mover of artillery, recovery and even ambulance duty. So not only is this one tough HumVee cruncher, a company here in my home state o' Michigan, Spartan Chassis Inc. said today it's been awarded a $23.7 million contract to supply parts to build this hunk-a, hunk-a metal and armor. No word yet on which company's been awarded the highly prized contract for turning it into a walking and talking transforming robot — but we're hopeful it happens soon. Gallery below of both the Buffalo, the vehicular mode for Bonecrusher, as well as the Cougar. – Ray Wert More »
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If the Rolls-Royce-grille-on-a-vw-beetle is your kind of meme, you may just want to run out and get an '88 or '89 Thunderbird or Cougar. Those are the donor vehicles for the Easy Rod, a kit whose result is a jackalopian beast that's part early-50s Merc, part late-80s FoMoCo, and altogether unsettling to look at. At current rates of depreciation, you can build one of these oddball canisters for around $1.97, give or take. Just don't expect to retire on a Barrett-Jackson score in ten years. Or ever. [Thanks to Vintage Racer for the tip.] – Mike Spinelli More »
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