Curbside Musings: 1995 Mercury Cougar XR7 – The Kitty Grew

Last month, my essay featuring a Jaguar XJ6 from the mid-’80s prompted memories of one of the cats in my childhood household, a tiger-striped tom named Chester.  In that piece, I had loosely compared that Jaguar to a black cat, and even though Chester didn’t have black fur, many recollections posted from commenters about the cats they had known and loved made me think of Chet.  My brother had named him, but it took little time for me to realize how perfectly his name seemed to fit him.  He was a Chester.  When I think of characterizations of house cats in popular culture, the word “aloof” often comes to mind.  I have been around cats for much of my life and have known many that needed to approach you instead of being approached.  Chester was not like that at all.  He was almost dog-esque in his demonstrative nature, boisterous personality, and loudness, being very capable of projecting his meow.

Chester would reciprocate your affection immediately, rewarding you with a loud purr that sounded like a small diesel engine, and with the “slow blink” by which he showed you that the two of you were cool.  Chester was there with me during the completion of many homework assignments and the compiling of mixtapes in my lower-level bedroom, sometimes forcing his way through the door that was partially wedged shut with just his pointy face and the fully-thrust weight of his body.  There was no way to expel him once he had basically invited himself into your room.  It’s like he had decided for both of you that he was supposed to be there, and you couldn’t argue.  As I had also mentioned in that Jaguar essay, he seemed to possess a certain skill with sensing when I wasn’t feeling my best, either physically or emotionally, and he would sometimes tone down his antics and simply be present with me without doing a thing.  I loved him.

1994 Mercury Cougar XR7 brochure page, as sourced from www.oldcarbrochures.org.

In that picture above, he was in early adolescence in cat-years.  He wasn’t a little kitten anymore, but he wasn’t quite an adult.  He looks lean, spry, and alert, and he was.  Once he had hit adulthood, though, he was a whole lot of cat.  I am not body shaming Chester for what could be characterized as a big-boned appearance, nor was he the in-the-fur embodiment of Garfield, but at some point, his lean appearance in that photo was gone.  He was still a cat, though, so he was plenty graceful, balanced, and fascinating to watch when he would leap onto things.  It’s just that he was so… big.  One of my brothers had said he was “oaf-like”.  That seemed harsh (it still does, actually), but the truth is that I couldn’t completely disagree.  Chester could still jump onto the mantle of our fake fireplace in the living room, but it was as if he wasn’t aware anymore of how big he was, and the occasional thing would go crashing to the floor.  His heart was still as big as he was.

Chester’s metamorphosis reminds me a little bit of that of the Mercury Cougar.  A recent online purchase of a 1:18 scale die cast model of a first-year ’67 Cougar XR-7 (pictured above and below) has had me reevaluating and re-appreciating the brilliance of that car’s combination of style, performance, and distinctive personality.  Even at CC, at least one writer has heralded the first Cougar as Mercury’s “greatest hit”.  The Cougar is one of those nameplates that was eventually affixed to an unusually wide array of vehicles and body styles, ranging from two- and four-door sedans, a front-drive compact hatchback, a midsize personal luxury coupe, and even a station wagon for just one year.  At least by the time that our featured ’95 was built, the Cougar was again exclusively a two-door coupe offered in different trim levels.  It was so much less confusing by the mid-’80s to know what a Mercury Cougar was.

Visually, the ’95 looks like a much bigger car than the ’67, but how much so was it in reality?  I was surprised to learn that the size of the newer car isn’t as far off from the original as I had assumed.  The ’67 was 190.3 inches long on a 111.0″ wheelbase, 71.2″ wide, 51.8″ tall, and had a starting weight in base form of almost exactly 3,000 pounds.  The ’95, by contrast, was just under 200.0″ long on a 113.0″ wheelbase, 72.7″ wide, and 52.5″ tall, weighing about 500 lbs. more.  The only significant difference in dimensions is in the length of both cars, much of which could be attributed to larger bumpers.  Unlike the V8-only original, the ’95 came standard with a 140-horsepower, 3.8 liter V6, with a 205-hp 4.6L V8 being optional.  (The standard 289 in the ’67 had 200 horsepower.)  Sales of 60,200 for ’95 seem pretty good to me for a car that was in the seventh year of this basic design.  The interior had been given a redo in ’94 to great effect, as depicted in the brochure page featured earlier.

I think there was still plenty of cat-like flavor in this ’95 Cougar, and absent the idiosyncratic, reverse-slant of the C-pillars of the previous design, some of these Cougars could be quite attractive, formal rear window and all.  Just like Chester had grown from a spry, agile kitten to a big cat with thick, luxurious fur, the Cougar had also grown and changed many times.  The handling benefits of its four-wheel independent suspension likely offset some of the disadvantages of its extra weight relative to the ’67.  By ’95, the Cougar had traded its original athletic, lithe physique for something just a little thicker in a car that, while still powerful with a V8, seemed like it just wanted you to feel good above all else.  This is and was the most Chester-like thing possible.

Pilsen, Chicago, Illinois.
Saturday, April 27, 2024.