The Mercury Cougar is, without a shadow of a doubt, the halo car for the entire brand. In its first-generation heyday of the late 1960s, it was one of the few muscle cars that combined speed with luxury in an era where you sometimes had to choose between one or the other. And in that beautiful blue, the whole car just pops.
The 428-cubic-inch V8 motor in the top of the line model was conservatively rated at 335 horses, but like so many other engines of the day it was highly underrated. How much it actually spit out depended on the individual car, but more than 400 horsepower wasn't unheard of. In a car unladen by all the weighty safety features we've got today, that translated into a forceful amount of acceleration. And it didn't look too bad doing it.
Photo credit Mike Pratt. For more of his work, check out his Flickr page. For a giganto-desktop version, click here.
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