Cougars are shy by nature, and here’s one that’s so far escaped our intrepid club of curbside (photo)shooters: the 1970 model. But nifticus found this one hiding somewhere in the wilds of British Columbia, and managed to peel off a couple of shots.
And so it’s on me to say something about it. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be terribly upbeat. And it’s not just my personal take on it, it’s also the undeniable facts of its depressing slide in sales, year-after-year, from what was a rather promising start in 1967.
Let me start this out on an upbeat note by pointing out that I was quite a fan of the original Cougar (1967-1968). Its styling was fresh and distinctive, and its Mustang innards are remarkably well hidden.
And perhaps more importantly, it had the best interior of any American car that year, hands down. Sure, it was a pretty blatant riff on Jaguar, but why not? Better to copy that than the rather austere interior of a Mercedes at that time.
That led to Car and Driver doing a rather unusual comparison of a Cougar XR-7 with a genuine Jaguar 420 sedan. CC Contributor GN posted that here, along with a lot of colorful commentary.
I did find a ’68 Cougar a few years back, and gave it the love here. Well, it’s hard to find someone that didn’t like the original iteration of the Cougar, and successful (and first) attempt to build a premium pony car. Or a more affordable personal luxury coupe, which realistically is what it was.
I know it has its fans, but I was let down by the 1969 version. It was just bland in comparison, watered-down and all the original’s distinctive edges rubbed smooth, like a worn bar of soap. And with an unhealthy dose of GM styling cues, like the Buick-like downward-sloping main character line on its sides. It even lost its distinctive little center prow, or whatever you want to call it.
That came back with a vengeance in 1970, as Mercury was getting a bit desperate about the sinking fortunes of the Cougar.
Here’s a chart that shows the cliff Cougar sales were falling off. Or at least a steep hillside they were tumbling down. 1967 sales were a pretty strong 148k, but they dropped every year thereafter, except for a dead cat bounce in 1973. Whatever had made the Cougar distinctive and appealing got lost very quickly.
Sales improved in 1974 to 92k, after the Cougar was reincarnated as a Monte Carlo/GP fighter, and stayed roughly at that level, until the Cougar took over the whole Montego line. But by then there was no correlation to what it had started out to be. A Cougar station wagon? Really? No wonder that poor Cougar is walking out of the shot. I’m so out of here…
I would speculate that in 1967, the Cougar was actually still able to get the attention of buyers who were perhaps leaning to an import, but managed to lure them back to a domesticated Jaguar. I’m not suggesting Cougar buyers were actually cross-shopping Jaguars; that’s very unlikely. But the import market was booming with mid-priced alternatives, such as the BMW 2002, the Opel Manta, and even the Capri in Mercury’s showrooms, starting in 1970. The Capri was a surprisingly big hit in the US, and quickly jumped to the #2 import sales spot. There’s little doubt that it played a role in the Cougar’s decline as an import wanna’ be.
So that’s my rather sad tale of the Cougar. Maybe yours is a bit more upbeat.
Related:
Vintage Comparison: 1967 Cougar XR-7 vs. Jaguar 420 GN
CC 1968 Cougar: Mercury’s Greatest (Or Only?) Hit PN
CC 1969 Cougar: Premium Pony Car TK
I had a 1971 base model, that I rescued from an impound lot around 1975. It had the 351C engine and 4 speed manual transmission, dual exhaust. It was black with the striped interior, which was filthy. The clutch was smoked as it had been repo’d and towed while in reverse. I was attending Motech at the time, so the car accompanied me through most of the sessions. After it was mechanically sorted and the interior cleaned, I painted it Silver with Black panels on the hood and sides. Chrome Motor Wheels completed the look. I drove it for a couple years until some kid kept pestering me to sell it, which I did. I wish that I had kept it, I loved that car.
I remember my cousin having a first-gen XR-7 and the interior was really something. This was in the late 70’s and the front end would squeak each time you bounced it a bit. I don’t recall it lasting long, the NJ winters with their tons of salt (resulting in a kind of mushroom soup corrosion paste) took a toll on every daily driver unless you hosed off the undercarriage regularly.
That would be Ford’s Squeak-a-matic front end. We were inflicted with this one- decent-curb-strike abortion in Aus as well
” took a toll on every daily driver ”
And Cougars were among the worst – far worse than Mustangs in the rear quarter panels.
A chance to buy one of these presented itself in the summer of 2006. A local car collector, a real gentleman, had maybe 30 various cars to liquidate as his age required. Most of Dan’s cars were very nice (he was an AACA member) but many had been neglected. That included a brown metallic ’70 Cougar coupe.
I took the car home for the weekend and cleaned it up. It looked better but was still a brown car – with a houndstooth vinyl roof. It needed brake work but was otherwise mechanically sound and dry/rust free. The wart on the nose made me hesitate (couldn’t it have been a ’69 instead?) but brown and houndstooth really justified giving up on buying that car.
I ended up with one of the three Corvairs in Dan’s collection. All three, my coupe and two convertibles, are still around town with the owners who got them from Dan. I have not seen the Cougar for years.
“dead cat bounce” Too funny! I could take a ’70 with the M-code 351C and 4 speed…
I would have happily taken the used one that Dad and I looked at as my first car in ’77. Alas it was over the budget by $500 and I ended up with a ’70 Skylark 350 hardtop…not so bad.
It may have looked good to my 16 year old eyes, but looking at them now….well, that soft 69/70 restyle with the Buick side styling is really weak and blah. Compared to the original ’67/68, it went from a college quarterback to a pudgy golfer in one sweep.
I actually prefer the style of this gen of Cougar, sans vinyl top, probably because it looks the most GM-y, as to me GM in those years owned car styling.
But the original was definitely a better Cougar. But I always seem to judge a particular car in a vacuum, without regards to its heritage/ancestry etc. I even like the later ones for different reasons, the Brougham-y ones included.
The Eliminator may be an exception, though. While I respect its power and performance, to me all the go-fast-looking stuff looks like it doesn’t belong on it. But I always like kind of a sleeper look. I prefer my badasses to come in a suit rather than a costume and cape, or a fighting robot. Also, the station wagon Cougar was the result of branding-creep as well and a step too far.
Unrelated note: Yesterday I saw a very clean, sliver 2000-2005 Toyota Avalon with the most hideous black fake convertible roof on it. It had gold trim and crests and said “Presidential” in gold cursive font. It was so gross! Just had to get that off my chest.
Seeing this makes me feel like a real slacker. My neighbor across the street has a ’69 or ’70 XR-7 convertible. However, the car is rarely out of the garage and if it is, one of his sons-in-law is driving it.
Perhaps next summer.
As a kid I was envious of other kids with 10 speed bikes, with both front and rear derailleurs. So when I read in a Hot Rod magazine about Mercury developing a two-speed rear end for the Couger I was thrilled:
‘Underneath was a two-speed Dana-Spicer Model 53 rear axle in keeping with Mercury’s “Streep Scene” marketing….”
https://www.hotrod.com/articles/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-mercury-cougar-eliminator/
I guess it never made it into production cars.
Personally if not for the out of place side sweep and a few fussy details(like horizontal bars on the grille rather than vertical to match the taillights) I think the 69 is the better design, especially inside. A few details on the 69s Dodge seemed to get wind of to incorporate into the Challenger too, the front and rear end designs are pretty similar besides the exposed headlights, and the rallye gauge layout is remarkably similar to the Cougar’s 4 round gauges in wood trimmed rectangular bezel look. To me the 69-70 dashboard really completed the distinction, it looked entirely different than the Mustangs balky double cove design, and while a few tells were shared like the optional passenger clock it seemed like corporate parts shared between different cars.
By contrast Mustang roots are actually quite obvious inside the 67-68, with the main difference being the double hump dash pad being flat, while the lower dash area and very distinctive protruding gauge pods are quite clearly of the same origin, and it must be noted that the XR-7 with its exclusive burled walnut appliqué was the only interior that lent itself any international comparison, a regular Cougar dash was just some puffy vinyl on the surface, it even had a bench seat option(which was unavailable in 69-70) As domesticated as it gets…
Here is a picture of ‘69 Cat. Say what you will but I turn heads whenever I take her out.
Agreed, there was a huge jump in quality/aesthetics when moving from the “plain” to the XR-7. I have never looked, but I think the XR-7 was a relatively low proportion of the total back then – most of the ones I ever saw were plain Cougars.
When my family travelled to BC years ago we liked to stay overnight at the halfway point, which was the Three Valley Gap hotel in Revelstoke.
In 2007 I noticed a parked ’68 Mustang that had Cougar taillights. The vehicle owner, who also owns the hotel, didn’t have an explanation. I found out later that Ford sold a “California Special” version of the Mustang that included this feature, which have become quite sought-after. I let him know via email what he had.
The California special used 1965 Thunderbird taillights, of manufactured creations only the 1967 Shelby Mustangs used Cougar taillights(sans vertical bars), while the 68-70 switched to the Tbird taillights as well
One of our crew had a Mustang “California Special” back in the day and IIRC, it had doubled-up standard Mustang tail-lights. It was white with blue trim and had California Special decals. Of course it could have been a tribute car even back in the 1980’s.
In 1969, Ford lost its way with the Mustang and Cougar as they became, effectively, midsize coupes. It seemed like a throwback to the Longer! Lower! Wider! days of the late 1950s. But GM followed the same trend with its monster 1971 full size cars. It wouldn’t be for a while that Detroit would really have to get off its Bigger Each Generation kick and by then, not only did they not really understand how to do it for several years more, but the marketplace didn’t trust them to do it right.
While the original is my favorite, these updates of the first gen are still pretty good in my eyes. I like “fancy cars” with nice upholstery and gadgets. The cat was creeping up in size, but to a guy who was happy driving Cadillacs a few inches wasn’t going to make much difference. The concept of a more upscale, euro looking car, compared to the Mustang was a good idea. Early ads made a lot of allusions to nations across the pond. They were more elegant than a Mustang, trimmer and more athletic (appearing) than a T Bird, and much more youthful than a Mark III. The comparison between the Jaguar sedan and the Cougar was off base though. It should have been compared to a E Type four seat coupe, though the Cougar would have been way out of it’s league. I bought a new ’84 model with “knife cut” roof. These were extremely popular. It was a very smooth, comfortable, quiet,well put together, road machine. I miss all the PLCs and I now have to satisfy myself with a couple of Mustangs.
It’s been written that Henry Ford II wanted the Mustang to be a ‘mini-Thunderbird’. With the Cougar, he finally got his wish.
By 1974, there was no more ‘mini’ about the Cougar with it now sharing intermediate PLC duty with the Torino Elite. It was all downhill for the Cougar from there, with a brief respite as a formal roof version of the 1983 aero Thunderbird.
I’m the 2nd owner of a1967 cougar for 45 years, with a full restoration, 4wheel disc, 17 inch wheel, I drive it once a week now, I’m 65
Only 45 years…?
I had a 1967 Cougar back in the mid ’80s. It had an upgraded 289 4bbl with a B&M automatic, front disc brakes from a GT Mustang, and some Shelby suspension goodies. It was painted Corvette yellow and black below the belt line, and very wide tires on cast aluminum rims. I was once pulled over doing 132mph on the 101 north of San Francisco when my wife went into labor. I got a police escort the rest of the way home and no speeding ticket. Just a friendly warning, ” Don’t ever do that again!”
Big fan of the Mercury Cougars. Love the upscale styling Mercury did with the cars. Sequential turn signals and hideaway headlights on the exterior were great designs. The interiors are beautiful and the early cars had great performing V8 engines. The mid 70’s cars lacked the V8 muscle, but still were stylish cars in their day.
The 70 Cougar suits me just fine.
As for the sales numbers, all the pony cars were down by the early 70s. By 71-72 Mustang sales were a quarter of what they had been in 66.
Also I intrinsically imagine the 1969-1973 Grande Mustang directly cannibalized sales of the Cougar. If you wanted a luxurious ponycar package in 67-68 the Mustang, F bodies and Barracuda really didn’t offer it. As attractive as the Cougars initial styling was I have a suspicion that those kind of buyers of the time would have been perfectly content with the identifiable and fashionable Mustang cues and the Grande package delivered it, what objective qualities did a standard Cougar really offer over one?
Typical Ford, Mercury languishes with grille engineered Ford’s and the second they overcome it Ford matches it under the Ford brand and once again Mercury languishes with grille engineered products. Same exact thing that happened to the Comet in 1966 happened to the Cougar by 1974
Unlike the ponycar competition, the Cougar was geared more towards an upscale, luxury offering. In fact, I’d dare say it was the Cougar that got GM to bring out a luxury-oriented 2nd-gen Firebird (Esprit) and definitely the Challenger RT/SE with its custom, one-year-only smaller rear window.
I liked these when they were new. The sequential turn signals out back were attractive, as were the hidden headlights.
A friend had an XR-7, of which I learned years later. He was proud of it having been his first car.
Today, seeing a car sans headrests, is just unbelievable. They must have become standard on American made cars in the early 1970s, just a few years after this one.
I think it was 1969, also when high back buckets started showing up in cars
It’s an interesting trivium that a Cougar wagon was offered in only two non-consecutive model years, 1977 and 1982. Even more so considering that the later one ran from 1978-86 but only used the Cougar nameplate that one year in the *middle* of its’ run.
I wasn’t too crazy about the front end styling of the ‘69 or the ‘70, but I’m ok with the Buick-Skylark-esque downward-sloping side-spear molding.
But those concave taillights of the ‘69 & ‘70? The cat’s meow, IMHO, if you’ll pardon the pun. That concave look to the taillights in those years is the same reason I prefer the ‘67 & ‘68 Mustang to the original ‘65 & ‘66(s).
I was going up Pikes Peak back in the day and Mercury was out there doing some testing on the road to the top. Among the cars was a 69 Cougar that had the 70 nose riveted on the front of the hood. I didn’t realize at the time what I was seeing but as soon as I saw the first 70 Cougar my young brain pulled that memory out. I would take a 70 Eliminator with the Boss 302 engine, 4 speed and the deepest rear gear they offered.
My preference is still the 67-68, probably because I own a 68. And as I have stated before they should have dropped the Cougar name after 1970. Station wagons? FWD compact coupes?
I am enjoying my 1970 competition yellow cougar with deluxe interior with white comfort weave seats. I bought this car with 84k in 2013. My first car was a blue 1970 cougar with white interior with 70k bought in 1979. The car I have now is in excellent condition. To me it’s more then just car, it’s about all the memories of my first car. Driving this summer was great, all the windows down and lots of fresh air.
Really nice looking Cougar. For some reason most of the ones I see for sale these days have a scoop on the hood, like they are trying to look like an Eliminator.
That would be Ford’s Squeak-a-matic front end.
I wish I could bring back my 1970 XR7. It was diamond blue with the dark blue leather interior. Loved the cockpit style with the wood trim wheel and rim horn. Always liked seeing the emblem on the brake pedal to denote disc brakes. Aftermarket wheels and white letter tires. Sequential tail lights were awesome for that time. Now just put it on a new mod chassis.
Loved the cockpit style with the wood trim wheel and rim horn.
Mine had the rim-squeeze horn too. Downside was, I had a really nice Vilem B Haan leather wheel cover, which I couldn’t use on the Cougar because of that wheel.
I am right there with you on considering the 69-70 to have lost the plot. They were not ugly cars, but they lacked that certain something that had made the 67-68 almost perfect at what it was.
Which is strange – the slightly larger dimensions should have played to the Cougar’s strength. As I look at these afresh, I agree that the Buick sweepspear crease is one culprit, and when they brought back the split grille for 1970 why did they have to put that huge piece of chrome in the middle of it? But I would take one of these every single day over the 1971-73 version.
Somewhat famously, Ross Perot’s 1992 Presidential running mate, Admiral James Stockdale, opened a debate with “Who am I? Why am I here?” The former navel pilot was one of the few that was willing to board what had become Perot’s campaign that was in a steep dive after a surprisingly successful start.
The early Cougar was was the Admiral Stockdale of cars.
I’m not sure that it was ever intended to be any sort of import fighter. It was much more an 8/10ths Thunderbird than anything else.
The design brief of the early Mustang made it something to everyone, including a mini-me Thunderbird. But, by 1970, the luxury Grande Mustang was among the poorest selling Mustangs. The base coupe with ale carte performance options and the performance oriented Mach 1 / Boss versions sold circles around the Grande.
The Cougar was an undersized personal luxury car and and oversize luxury oriented pony car that got mauled in the market.
The timeline was that was the Cougar’s to fight….
1968 – GM’s A body is all new, and the ascension of the Oldsmobile Cutlass coupe begins in earnest with a major sales increase over the prior year.
1969 – Pontiac’s all new Grand Prix (sales 112,486) defines the popular priced personal luxury car as a bigger and more luxurious car for a few hundred dollars more than a Cougar.
1970 – GM’s F body is all new, and further steers the pony segment toward a performance orientation, especially in terms of styling.
1970 – Chevrolet’s all new Monte Carlo (sales 145,975) further defines the popular priced personal luxury car with a starting price of $3,123, almost perfectly between the base Cougar at $2,917 and the Cougar XR-7 at $3,201.
1974 – The Cougar grows up when Mercury transfer’s the Cougar name to what had been a slow selling mid-size Mercury Montego coupe. Cougar sales nearly triple to 91,670 in a terrible sales year for the industry. Problem solved.
The car from the Mustang portfolio that the Cougar replaced with some initial success……
I’m surprised no one has noticed how much the Cougar appears to be sitting lower in the rear in the ad for 1967. It’s probably just an illusion by the lighting and angle perspective, but it’s some poor photography, at the very least. It really looks like the rear springs have collapsed.
I’m with you, the first two years were the best in the XR-7 form. The styling was sophisticated and distinctive, no hint of Mustang to taint. But, as soon as they just had to start the annual restyles, it deteriorated quickly to where they might as well have taken a whole new styling theme. The lack of a convertible the first two years was simply inexcusable.
Ya. I remember how embarrassing that squeaking on the front ends could be cruising the strip in the late seventies. I developed that problem this year and narrowed it down to the hinged base plate bushing for the front spring. This part is not readily available so I drilled a small hole in the steel sleeve and the dry rubber bushing down to the hinge pin. Used a large grease needle and greased it. Problem solved, no more squeaking at all. Cheers