Here’s a mostly well-preserved example of the offensively ugly American Ford products of the 1970s. This is a ’77, ’78, or ’79 Mercury Cougar Brougham sedan—perhaps someone out there in televisionland can pick the year. Paul’s post the other day of a same-colour Ford-branded one made me remember snapping these pics just off Vancouver’s Commercial Drive five years ago.
Despite its Super Big Gulp proportions, this car was considered an “intermediate” sized car—LOLROFL; perhaps that was a side effect of the bad drugs evidently flushing round Ford at the time. Like the ’71-’76 GM B-bodies, this car looks grotesquely bloated and haphazard and disjoint from every angle, as though the “design” (must we?) team went beyond not talking by deliberately telling one another lies alternative facts as to what each was doing on his own part of the work. The brown (ack) padded (cack) vinyl (barf) roof surely doesn’t help. Neither do the “Brougham” callouts helpfully emplaced in case you couldn’t tell, nor the exterior doorhandles that look like an afterthought hastily stuck on with chewing gum, nor the fecal-brown interior. Then there’s the rear styling that looks like a cheap imitation of the ’75 Cutlass, the rear bumper that looks like either it got hit or it was thrown on that way at the factory, the cartoonish front and rear overhang (“Look, watch me understeer!” even when it’s supposedly parked). And that’s not to mention that I saw one of these, in this same colour, hit and kill a Golden Retriever on a Colorado freeway when I was about 8 years old.
This what’s pictured originally cost the equivalent of about $22K in 2018 US Dollars. Over half a million North Americans bought and drove these misshapen, ill-handling, barely-stoppable stupidmobiles with grossly inefficient engines huffing and puffing out about four tenths of a horse per cubic inch, assuming they started and ran and drove on any particular try—134 horsepower from 302 cubic inches/4.9 litres, 149 hp from 351 cubes/5.8 litres, or the pièce de merde résistance: 173 whole, entire horsepowers from 400 cubic inches/6.6 litres—to do their grocery shopping and take the kids to karate (we don’t do that any more; now we have SUVs). Fuel economy consumption of the ’78 49-state models was claimed—ha ha, verrrry funny; ho ho, it is to laugh—as 13/19 miles per US gallon with the 400, 14/20 with the 351, 15/22 with the 302. Real-world figures would’ve been quite a bit lower in the 49 states, and markedly lower still in California. Speaking of Super Big Gulps.
The Cougar started life in 1967 as a sporty hardtop coupé meant to sit somewhere between the Mustang and the T-bird. A decade on, Ford had a grand-mal one of their Better Idea™ attacks: they discarded the Montego name previously applied to midsized Mercury models, and instead badged them all as Cougars—which polluted, diluted, and pissed away about the same large amount of brand equity as was done by renaming the Torino the “LTD II”. Pony car, schmony car; now there were Cougar sedans, a stripper base-model Cougar coupé, and Cougar station wagons known as “Cougar Villager” if you bought the one with phony wood appliqué down the sides. All of them are on the list of cars I’m very pleased we mostly don’t see any more.
I mean, I get that cars like this were what was on offer at the height depth of the brougham era, but ow, my freakin’ eyes and oooog, my stomach. Were cars like this a symptom of the malaise era, or a cause? Both, I guess. Whatever which way, I surely hope these excrescences will weigh against Lee Iaccoca when he’s called to account for his sins.
Nevertheless, I was taught to say something nice, so, um…
…uh…
…just a minute, now, don’t press me; if you nag at me, I’ll never come up with something…
Ah! The, uh, the opera windows probably make rear-flank visibility slightly less completely impossible, and at least this one isn’t “Dove Gray” (i.e., industrial floor epoxy grey). There.
I wasn’t able to get a front view. It wouldn’t have helped.
Cougar ’67-’68, anything else was built too late.
Amen! Having owned a 67 back in the day I agree my “Like” goes all the way up to the 1970 model. This monstrosity makes me want to cry 🙁 Cougar sedan?, Cougar station wagons? GAAACK!!! Did Lee Iacocca have a hand in this before he got fired? His motto I heard was “Give ’em leather, Give ’em opera windows” Ok no Opera windows on this beastie, those rear quarters windows come close.
Yes, these were vomitted forth on Iaccoca’s watch.
There is no argument that can be mounted on this one!
I will be the counterpoint to this rant. In the right colour with the right wheels they were not bad looking at all, a much crisper take on the old Torino/Montego platform. Taken in the context of the times, they were very much in style and right for their demographic. Most everything was overwrought back in the ’70s, and these were no worse than many other cars of the day, and better than some. I really liked the “Lincolnesque” front grill, and the upper level models had nice interiors. They were also smaller and easier to drive than the big Ford/Mercurys/Lincolns.
I was 13 in 1977 and remember seeing lots of these on the roads.
I appreciate your points, but I’m still smiling because I have to look real hard at just the right angle to see “not bad looking” and “no worse than many other cars” as praise. 😉
(Also, I disagree. I think the midsize offerings from GM and Chrysler were far more coherently designed, as were GM’s full-sizers, in the ’77-’79 timeframe.)
In the ’70s were were all being told that we’d have to accept reduced expectations and that downsized, smaller cars would not be a choice with CAFE, oil crises etc. For a certain generation born in the ’40s cars like these made that transition more palatable.
I am 54 but have friends 20 yrs older and they talk about how they’d gladly return to the ’70s since it was a “better” time. Even though I was just a young teen during that time, I sometimes wish for a return to simpler times too.
We can only ever perceive a place at a time, or a time at a place.
I think many here profess their dislike of today’s “mis-shapen blobs” that “all look alike” and harken back to the “olden glory days”. What’s better, this or the moderns?
I was 8 in 1977 and this is pretty representative of what most of the 70’s American stuff looked like (and still does) to me. There are of course a few standouts but this is to me kind of analagous to a ’95 Taurus or an ’04 Intrepid, i.e. a good representation of the breed in general from a styling standpoint.
Of course it’s not fair to compare two vehicles 40 yrs apart since the newer one is bound to have better driving dynamics, reliability, safety etc. But having said that, just the other day I rode in a friends brand new Hyundai Santa Fe – hard to climb up in to, and seats in a utility fabric that were nearly hard as rocks. Makes me long for something else.
I would say cars of an era—any era—tend to look very similar. For any given set of design requirements, constraints, and priorities, at any given state of the art of materials and production science and technique, there’s a finite number of ways to make, finish, and assemble a door handle, a front fascia, a taillamp, or whatever. It’s why cars of today, or of the ’90s, or of the ’80s (’70s, ’60s, ’50s, ’40s, etc.) are readily identifiable as such no matter what make or model they might be. Likewise, it’s why the “all the same!” complaint never really dies out. They were lamenting in ’68 that a new Dart looked like its Valiant, American, Nova, and Falcon competitors, just like we lament today, half a century later, that today’s cars all look alike. That’s just the way it works, excepting the odd radical design that departs from convention.
There was a broader color pallet and for a 68 Dart there were four distinct body styles that year, same pretty much went for any other model at the time. There is more variety in a 68 Dart than entire model lineups from some manufacturers today, and that’s just one year, they facelifted it every single year for even more variety. So I remain unconvinced it’s simply my rose tinted glasses talking when my thinking that all new cars looking the same is more true now than ever.
XR7 – It could be argued though that just as one example vehicles such as the Honda Pilot, Ridgeline, Odyssey, and Acura MDX which are built on the same platform and same assembly line interchangably and really are variations of each other are sort of analogous if not even more varied than those 4 Dart styles though. The facelift thing is iffy, nobody but a gear-head would ever realize the grille changed.
Trucks today though reflect the Dart example a bit better for the domestics since their passenger cars are dying, back then there were nowhere near the amount of different trim levels and differences in the lineups, right?
I’ll give you the color palette thing though but if you were a fan of metallic gray, you NEVER had a choice of six or seven shades of them on a Dart in the same year. 🙂
That’s platform sharing though, if the Dart were the only model in the Dodge lineup in 1968 that would be true, but you also had the B body and C bodies with their own bodystyle variety. Off the top of my head that would be 12-13 bodystyles for the division that year. Whether or not that system translates to today’s priorities is another matter, but it definitely feeds the perception of cars looking different from each other with that mostly obsolete practice. The general population may not recognize annual grille changes(though they would more major changes every 3 or so years) but they can tell a Dart wagon from a sedan and could probably even figure out that the hardtop looks different than the 2 door sedan.
With the topic of shared platforms consider how many different cars were on the Falcon platform just in a given year. Pilot = Falcon wagon, Ridgeline = Ranchero, Odyssey = Fairlane wagon, MDX = Mercury Montego wagon.
I will say that the US car manufacturers have always had a bit of sameness to them. But back in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and even into the 80’s the foreign makes were still “foreign” and distinctly different. You might be forgiven for confusing this ’77 Mercury with the ’77 Oldsmobile, but probably not with the ’77 Mercedes or the ’77 Toyota.
Nowadays, the sameness extends to everyone – the Asian and European cars are just the same looking anonymous blobs as the American cars.
Really! Remember the 73, 74 + 75 Chevelle Laguna S3’s after coming off a 72 model how the hell can a design that piece of shit
As regards the sign on the fence, is it even possible for a North American male to go into a hardware store (any hardware store) and be back out within 10 minutes to move the car? It’s pretty much a genetic requirement to wander every aisle and pick up and examine at least half a dozen random objects, as well as inquiring about two more that in no way have anything to do with the reason you went in to begin with and that more than likely would not have any possible use around the current house but would be good to know about for “future reference”. At least, that describes me.
Maybe that 10-minute limit is only for the parking row right up front near the store. Still, it has to be hard to go into any store of that size and be out in just 10 minutes!
BTW, I hated those Fords and Mercurys then, and the passage of 40 or so years hasn’t done them any favors.
As a teenager, about a couple hundred years ago it seems, I worked at a downtown shoe store How quaint, Remember them? Owner felt On street meter parking was for customers. Parking in the alley behind the store was prohibited. However the owner had a deal with the meter maid. Every day she would ticket his car, and everyday he would pay it at “courtesy boxes” Posted on every block. worked out to be much cheaper to pay the fine (Like a $1.00 I believe in 1969) Then it was to park in a pay lot! Or run out a feed a meter every 1/2 hour!
Agree with you about hardware shopping, but make it a clothes store, and I could be back in that car and driving off with 7 outfits within 8 minutes.
In fact, the last time I intentionally* clothe-shopped, which was December 18 1992 at 2.35pm, I was back n’ driving inside 6.
*as opposed to those inevitable tortures where an other half insists your ’92 jeans really are worn out and comes along and supervises and actually insists you try things on and generally takes 2 hours and 54 minutes longer than necessary.
Perhaps after reading Pauls write up intermediate referred to the interior dimensions, it certainly doesnt appesr intermediate from the outside.
They were “Intermediate” compared to the fullsize FoMoCos with engines up to 460 c.i. to move all that bulk.
Some “compacts” felt larger inside, such as Chrysler’s and the Volvos.
When Ford cloned the Maverick to create the Comet many folks criticized Ford for not doing enough to differentiate the 2 cars. Yet, with a car that I would think sold in higher numbers and had a higher profit margin, Ford appears to have spent LESS to make the Cougar look different from the LTD II. All the money appears to have been spent on the sheet metal ahead of the windshield.
If I had had to choose between the Ford or the Mercury, I would have gone with the Mercury. By comparison to the Mercury, the Ford is dull as dishwater.
This isn’t complicated. The action was in personal lux coupes, and Ford did just fine with the 77–79 Thunderbird and XR7, which got the tooling money. Ford already had up to date large and small RWD cars in the pipeline, and spent the minimum amount on these turds to offer a complete line of cars til the new wave came in. Ford stuck the XR7 fascia on the basic LTD II shell and put it in the Mercury catalog because all of the parts already existed.
By the late 70s, there was little price difference between equivalent Fords and Mercs. Notably, the Granada and Monarch listed for exactly the same price.
Go ahead, tell us what you REALLY think!
But seriously, this isn’t the ugliest of the bunch. The Parthenon grille and horizontal square headlights foretold the box-Panther big Lincolns and looked half a generation newer than the LTD II and Thunderbird, the extra rear quarter windows lightened the interior considerably, and the whole thing is nowhere near as misshapen-in-every-line as the ’74-76 Torino.
Agreed on all points. To your last one though, about the Torino: yes, but now we are quibbling over whether German Shepherd poo is less or more sticky and odiferous than Mastiff poo…!
as far as I’m concerned, the Cougar was canceled after the 1973 model year. I don’t regard those sad grille-and-badge jobs after that to be worthy of consideration.
Here’s something good to say – the owner wisely invested in not just basic CAA, but they got CAA Plus! That gets them towing availability for longer distances!
To be quite fair, this car is less over the top, bloated, inefficient, than any of the cowboy wannabes, Home Depot run, 4 door Mommy pickups of today.
Actually I think it is more inefficient (less efficient). That fuel mileage I believe is easily beatable with just about any configuration in the half-ton class at least, no matter how large and while they may be too large, they can certainly haul more and hold more too.
To be quite fair, a 2018 F-150 with a 5.0 is rated at 22 mpg highway by the EPA – the same as this Mercury and that’s for a 4×4. A two-wheel drive F-150 with the 2.7 is rated at 26 mpg highway.
So what’s that about efficiency?:)
I reckon Jason was actually asleep in bed, but suddenly sat bolt upright when Hardboiled posted that.
“Somebody somewhere is criticizing pickup trucks! To the laptop!”.
Pickups being involved is irrelevant; some statements just need to be challenged.
Besides, I was still awake and used my desktop. 🙂
I stand by what I said. According to the article, the Cougar costs $22,000 in 2018 money. The average F150 today costs $35,000. Nobody ever had to finance tires for a Cougar. Fuel economy on either is not impressive with gas at $3.00 a gallon. A 5,000 pound brick is going to get 26 mpg? On the return trip from the mountain top. I’m afraid that we are not going to see eye to eye on this.
It’s interesting you bring up costs for tires and purchase price now and not earlier.
Anyway, yes we agree to disagree but that’s the beauty of life. So in the interest of true balance, I found a site with actual reported fuel mileage. Here’s a report for the 2018 F-150, all body styles so this will include both two- and four-wheel drive, with the 2.7. The fat part of the bell curve is 18 to 21 mpg, still anything better than this LTD / Cougar ever achieved!
http://www.fuelly.com/car/ford/f-150/2018?engineconfig_id=49&bodytype_id=&submodel_id=
It’s Saturday night. Pour out a shot on me. I’ll pour out a shot on you. Cheers and best wishes.
I agree with Frank Bray and Nlpnt and a few other people. Compared with the really bloated, coke bottle bulgy Torino, the straight lines on this car look lighter than the pudgy curves. It doesn’t have weird curves and character lines which go nowhere like the Mustang II and Pinto. It’s clean and well proportioned without a lot of ridiculous gingerbread or the weird proportions of the earlier 2 door LTDs with a tiny glass area set on top of an enormous bottom. The almond and chocolate aren’t a bad colour combination even today, and for 1977-1979, very tasteful, especially compared with the various body fluid colours which were more commonly available. (Cat sick orange, dog sick yellow, bile green, flesh, dirt, yuck). The front and rear styling are crisp and have actual shapes, instead of the blob taillights that were used on earlier LTDs.
Was this a high water mark for Ford? No, but I’m having trouble thinking of a midsize Ford which really hit great styling cues. I guess the ’83-86 Fox LTD or bustleback Continental were sharp. All cars were malaise choked, sucked gas, and handled poorly in the ’70’s. You couldn’t buy a nicely styled, powerful, reliable, 2018 Camcordima or what have you in 1978.
The 70s did bring us some ugly Ford products, like the Mustang II and earlier LTD and Torino and definitely some seriously eye searing Japanese products, which nowadays, since they are seen rarely and only individually don’t seem as ugly but had overdoses of styling on tiny cars with lots of ugly plastic, character lines, and “surface excitement,” and all came in rotten fruit colours.
This is not the worst of the 70s by any means. If you really think this was the low point, you didn’t live through the 70s and the 80s hangover. This was undoubtedly a comfortable car to ride and drive in, if overweight and ponderous for the capacity, but you could fit four adults and luggage in reasonable comfort, which was better than something like a Pinto or Granada. It made it 40 years and is still chugging along, so Ford got SOMETHING right.
This is way to harsh a judgement. Yes the color is awful, but the car is beautiful and the grill is magnificent. It’s also mechanically a good car and with a few cheap mods you had good performance and good economy. It’s much nicer and better hat the hideous little gm midsized cars with their weak 6 cylinder engine s and weak transmissions and non opening windows. And much more impressive than a lebaron or diplomat too.bbi would drive one. And you could easily modify it into ant bird sedanif you wanted.
Beautiful and wonderful awsome supersized midsized sedan. It Makes a Malibu look pathetic in comparison.
Hang on Daniel, I’ve got some of the antidote here. Don’t everyone push, there is enough for anyone who needs it.
I feel so much better now.
Thank you, JPC. Ahhhh, that’s some plop-plop/fizz-fizz level relief right there.
My father loved these mid sized Mercurys. We had a string of Montegos from 1968 to 1981. Before his sudden passing in 1978 he was preparing to buy a black XR-7 to replace our 1974 Montego. It’s hard for me to look at these cars and not remember my dad…
I grew up in all manner of USDM Ford products; everyone in our family had one of the cars during the 1970’s and I probably turned a wrench on them, too. I agree with Daniel, they were hard on fuel, ran poorly and handled like a shopping cart. I can remember riding or driving in other brands of cars at the time and in some cases how much better they steered, rode or braked. But, they still evoke a time and place for me. It would be nice to find a cherry 78 Cougar XR-7 in black, in memory of my dad.
Glad you have something nice to think about when recalling your Dad..
I got to drive some ’78 Cougars when I worked for Hertz, not sure about an XR-7 but we did drive lots of Thunderbirds (and LTD II’s )…I enjoyed them….the job didn’t pay much, but 40 years later I still think fondly about that time.
My Dad has been gone only 2 years, but I think about the cars he owned (he had many more than I’ll ever own)…I had an Uncle that had a ’74 Montego 4 door (he died the same year as my Father, who was the oldest of 3 boys, even his youngest brother who was 15 years younger than my Dad died that same year…their whole generation was gone in 6 months of 2016). My Dad had 3 Mercury Sables in a row, starting with a 1989, which he got after my sister wrecked his 1986 Dodge 600, he then leased a 1994 Sable, after 2 years he bought his last (1996) Sable. He liked the local Mercury dealer, which is one reason he had so many Sables. After that he switched to Chevrolet and bought 2 Impalas (a 2001 and a 2006) in a row.
Funny how that seemed to work…in the early 60’s he owned 2 AMC Rambler wagons in a row (they started the series of wagons he owned in the the 1980s)….I guess if he found something he liked he wasn’t adverse to buying much the same vehicle a few model years newer…and he kept his cars a lot fewer years than I do now.
The front end of this Merc looks much better with its horizontal headlights than those stacked monstrosities used on the LTD II! I can think of plenty of uglier FORD-made cars of the 1970s than the one pictured above. The 1975 Gran Torino Brougham *with the fender skirts* offend my eyeballs greatly. The ones w/out the f-skirts look ok to me, but those ~with~ them look like Ugly Overdose. I can’t explain exactly why they register displeasure in my brain, but they do. GAG.
Also: I noticed you were channeling Daffy Duck, Meester Stern. “Ho, ho — it is to laugh”.
I find Mustang II’s to be fUGLY! Not FORD’s best-looking car by a longshot. GROAN.
I spent a day interviewing at Ford Dearborn in December 1976, and saw lots of prototypes, mockups and test mules of Fox Mustangs and Fairmonts. Obviously their development had started a year or two before that, so clearly Ford saw the writing on the wall when these bloated cars were going on sale. But you know, with 40 years hindsight, these don’t look that different than Colonnades or whatever Chrysler was doing at the time. What irked me – and still does after 40 years – is the debasement of the Cougar name, however.
I’ve written before about my time working at Hertz in Denver in the ’70s.
These Cougars, and the LTD IIs, were fine cars. The mid-sized four door fleet at Hertz in ’77 included colonnade Olds & Chevy, Plymouth/Dodge Fury/Monaco, AMC Matador and the Granada/Monarch.
Hertz did not buy the Chryslers nor the AMCs; they were leased. And they were horrible – especially the Chryslers. The Chryslers were not durable enough to be rental cars. The customers thought they were in the penalty box if they got the AMC Matador.
The GMs were owned by Hertz (as were the Fords). I think they were OK but also had small trunks. The LTD II & Cougar were durable and customers did not complain about them. The “mid sized” Fords were not considered ugly, unusual or undesirable. They were just fine for 1977.
Hertz also had the XR-7/Thunderbird, two door Cougar/LTD II and several (in ’77) LTD II and Cougar wagons.
I drove all of these mid sized cars. I liked the Cougar/LTD II.
Your answer reflects the reality of the times. The fact is these cars were just average 70s malaise mobiles and not as bad as some other choices. I remember when these cars were on the road and they just blended into the background. During those times, our family’s generally considered Chrysler and AMC products of this era the worst, due to the horrific quality. I seems, more people were willing to put up with Ford’s lack of driving dynamics over Mopar and AMCs lack of reliability and quality.
While there is no doubt cars were taking a major direction change in the late 1970’s, not all customers were ready to switch to the “new fangled” downsized cars. Many people with more traditional or conservative tastes liked big soft riding cars and weren’t ready to give them up yet. These cars filled that niche.
That said, I do think Ford made a terrible effort on making these cars as a stop gap. They were marketed as an smaller alternative to the fullsize cars, yet they were not much smaller. Ford actually increased the length on the LTD II compared to the Torino (appears to be all in front overhang). Why Ford did not chop the front overhang and move the rad support back is beyond me. They easily could have reduced the length of these cars to somewhere around 210″ without any significant engineering changes. They also would have been further ahead to revise the suspension, which would have cost basically nothing. But they didn’t. All they did was put a more modern looking body on the car and made no real effort to improve it anywhere else.
In the end though, I think Ford saw these 4-door sedans as easy way to make more profit off this platform with little effort. Much like how the 4-door Buick Century’s were given a half-assed update in ’76, Ford did the same with these cars. The real sellers were the 2-door T-birds and the XR7’s. I remember those littering the streets, while the 4-doors were practically non-existent.
Me too!…except I worked at the Hertz location out of the South Burlington Airport in Vermont…worked there 2 summers in a row (1977 and 1978)…and I was a transporter for them while I was in between semesters at College.
Sounds like you were also working for them about this same time (if you drove LTDII/ Cougars, which would have been new and in the fleet about this time). Our location had mostly Fords, and the LTDII was probably the most common car I remember driving (but also the Thunderbird, and the Mercury Cougar (including the wagon which I remember well, since we used Wagons as a “dropoff” vehicle to get transporters like myself to the destination where their target car was located to bring it back to the home (renting) location…you could fit more of us in a wagon than a sedan. We also rented lots of Granadas and (in 1978) Fairmonts (don’t remember a Zephyr though). Back then our location seemed to focus on Fords (no pun intended). I used to get stopped at the Canadian border a lot as a young guy driving a late model Ford..fit a profile, I guess, they always wanted to see what was in my trunk (which was always empty except for the spare tire)….we were closer to Montreal than any other large city in the US.
We also had GM cars, but not much variety….I remember some B body cars like the Impala, but mostly the “compact” cars, like Chevy Novas, and Olds Omegas being the most common ones…but definitely fewer in number than Fords.
And as you mention, we had a sprinkling of Chrysler and AMC cars…the most common Chrysler I think was actually the Dodge Diplomat, which I liked a lot…not sure why we didn’t have Volares or lesser trimmed cars, but if we did I don’t remember them. I also remember driving a Dodge Magnum, which I really liked (it was green with cloth interior, probably doesn’t sound too attractive but that’s what I’d look for if I was buying one today). I remember AMC Pacers, but no Matadors, nor even Hornets nor Concords (in 1978).
We had a few imports, mostly Datsun 510’s (the late 70’s one, not the iconic early 70’s model) and Toyotas (Corolla Liftback, which I also liked).
Anyhow, back to the Cougar, I have same comments as I posted for the recent LTDII article…at home we had just traded my Dad’s 1973 Ford Country Sedan for a ’78 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Wagon, so I was used to how the even bigger Fords drove, though we never had a mid-sized Ford, the LTDII and Cougar really were similar to the large Ford in my recollection. They were typical mid-70’s cars, good highway cruisers, but of course used lots of fuel (I think most of them had 351 V8s). So they weren’t offensive at the time (at least not to me) though of course we’d been through fuel shortages by then and cars had started to downsize but not all the models had yet been completed. I was happy just to have an air-conditioned car in the summer to drive around in, as my personal car at the time, a 1974 Datsun 710 certainly didn’t have air conditioning.
Great time for working in rental car business…you got to drive several cars I think now of as “end of an era” models that we’ll probably not see the likes of again…plus as a car person, I got to drive way more different cars than I’d ever have done otherwise (I’ve only owned 5 cars in the 44 years I’ve been driving thus far….but of course also drove friends/relatives cars but not nearly as many different ones as when I worked for Hertz.
I don’t think the LTD II looks all that bad, at least in the 2 door version. I would be happy to drive this one on Cruise Night
Stacked rectangular headlights for the lose.
I actually like the looks of these. But I can’t argue about these cars’ packaging, fuel efficiency, performance, etc etc. Also, as much as I like the colour brown… I hate this colour combination.
Ultimately, it was probably a good thing the fuel crises happened. Sure, American cars struggled through the 70s and 80s but look at the kind of performance and efficiency they have today. And you can trace that back to the fuel crises for jolting the Big 3 out of the “let’s make each generation bigger and bigger” mindset.
It’s fun reading such posts. Being from a far-flung foreign place, I always assumed (even as a movie-watching kid in the era of this car) that North Americans all thought these heaving monstrosities were quite lovely, or, at least normal. For me, I agree with Jim Klein’s comment to the effect that this thing looks broadly indistinguishable from most US cars of that era, which is to say enormous and bereft of taste. The fun is in finding out that heaps of you hated this sort of junk even then.
Fun and instructive: it’s good to learn that the drooling bad taste and bad design was apparent to many, because it helps makes the US a lot more understandable to the rest of us. Helps stop us painting the place in (foolishly) broad strokes too.
Jim’s not alone in his thoughts about this Mercury / Ford. Even when these were new, and I was quite young, I really remember just not liking these. At the time they seemed like a chocolate Easter bunny left in the sun too long that now resembled a two-legged jackass.
While a lot of cars here during the 1970s weren’t the most tasteful, there’s always been (to me) two types of distasteful – delightfully distasteful and vulgarly distasteful.
Using Ford products, a 1975 Thunderbird was delightfully distasteful. It was big, it was thirsty, it had a certain degree of originality and uniqueness. It was meant for two people and while it shared a body with Lincoln, it was visually different.
On the other hand, this Mercury is more on the vulgar end. It’s a badge engineered Ford, it was packaged so the whole family could enjoy the relative lack of interior space, and it’s rather the embodiment of everything Ford was doing crappy during the 1970s.
Given the size and demographics of the US, there has always existed some vastly different thoughts and philosophies (that is not a political statement). It’s reflected in many ways, with our automobiles being a prime example. Whereas as I’ve been humorously accused of being pickup centric, I’m not (despite Tonito’s good-natured comment above); my goal has been to simply broaden the understanding.
Perhaps the best example of the differences is something I recently heard on the radio. The general manager of the local Toyota dealer was on. He said the Camry, Corolla, and RAV4 are 2/3 of what they sell. Makes sense. He then went on to say those three models are 1/3 of what Riley (the dealer’s name) sells. What is the brand that comprises the bulk of the other 2/3? Chevrolet.
I don’t agree to there being anything delightful about the ’75 Blunderbird, but aside from that, and having had a tough time over the years disagreeing with descriptions of the ’70s as “the decade that taste forgot”, I am totally onside with your observation about the two kinds of tasteless design. Some of what saw the light of day in that decade is tastelessness so extreme that it crosses the event horizon into the realm of camp.
I owned a ’75 Thunderbird for six years so I am biased. It was a truly delightful car that I routinely miss. Sure the driving dynamics sucked but it had a certain endearing panache that has simply never been duplicated.
What prompted you to part with your ’75 T-Bird?
I found someone willing to pay me a lot more than I paid for it. It was an offer I could not refuse.
Absolutely no doubt there’s a point where bad taste is simply fun (and those glamorous chic Euro’s are not immune – an amusingly over-detailed orange Renault 17 anyone?), though I can’t think of a US ’70’s example which achieves that. And Jason, your article on pick-ups was a proper piece of education for me about differing thoughts and philosophies and needs no apologising for.
Justy Baum, I’m glad to shine light.
Please don’t judge the US by its current administration, either.
I don’t, sir!
I mentioned in another post about this car’s LTD II sibling, that I actually liked that car’s styling.
But this is too busy, too fussy, too…
The rear side windows and curved roofline compared to the LTD II are what ruin it for me. And I vastly preferred the stacked-headlight look on the LTD II over the Merc.
On top of everything else…to call it COUGAR?!
A car like this only makes me appreciate all the more what FoMoCo achieved with newer platforms like the Fox and Panther platforms, on into the Taurus/Sable.
I think you’re trolling us with this line, chas “And I vastly preferred the stacked-headlight look on the LTD II over the Merc”. 😀
→ You just wanna be The Contrarian here, don’t ya?
Hilarious! Mr. Stern, “review” any car, any car at all, if you can find the time; preferably a set of wheels you don’t like. Hell, you can even leave out the images, I don’t care. It’s all about the prose, I get the picture(s) anyway.
Got an alternative name for a Mercury Cougar Brougham, by any chance?
»doffs cap, bows« Uhhhthenkya. Thenkyavurramuch.
I’m afraid I’m coming up blank on a filked name for the Mercury Cougar Brougham, though.
Mercugly Cougar Brougham.
This era of Cougar reminds me of seeing pictures of someone who was slim and athletic in the late 1960’s after they gained a lot of weight and started wearing leisure suits in the 1970’s…..
Elvis Presley, like such as.
For Ford this was the right car at the right time. 1977~79 had set record sales for the Mercury Cougar and sister car Ford Thunderbird. Over 1,400,000 sold between the two. More yearly sales volumes than all the previous model years.
Japanese cars of this era were not luxurious and were not competing in the personal luxury market. The Japanese cars had poor interiors, poor air conditioning, small interior space, no gadgets, no towing, unsafe, and low on power. Of course, later the Japanese would go on into the 1980’s & 90’s to build the highest quality cars in the industry.
Here was my 1979 Cougar that I drove from 13,000 original miles to a 180,000 miles trouble free. I drove that car 520 miles a week on the Detroit freeway system year round. The picture is when I sold it in 2007 for $700.
This past spring I bought a 1979 Ford Thunderbird with 13,300 miles to replace my troublesome Audi 5000 drivers. The definition of a reliable German car is a vehicle that you need to continually work on and replace the parts over and over again to keep it reliable. Funny, all 3 of my Audi 5000’s had the same problems. So it was engineering design issues.
I hope the T-Bird will repeat the success of the Cougar and free up my future garage time that previously was wasted on those Audi’s.
But most of the ’77-’79 sales were Thunderbirds and Cougar XR-7s. Sales of the sedans and non-luxo coupes started off weak and fell off a cliff from there. And as for the Japanese, the 1976 1/2 Honda Accord set new standards for quality, equipment, driving pleasure, and refinement – proof that a small and economical car did not have to be a penalty box. The Accord was a smash success and Detroit was blindsided.
In 1977~79 a 2 door car was considered more young and sporty.
For 1976 Honda showed how quickly an engine could need a head gasket and have the body and suspension rust. In the midwest the engines did not like extreme temperature cycling and the bodies had poor corrosion protection.
However note that later Honda did go on to build some of the best engines and cars in the world.
I wondered what if Ford had decided to keep the Montego name for its 4-door sedan and wagon while all 2-door Montegos are renamed Cougar in different trims (MX, MX Brougham and XR-7) following a pattern then Dodge once used for the Coronet and Charger earlier in the decade?
Hilarious rant – keep em coming ! 😉
»tips hat« Thank you kindly! I’ll try my best.
“…debasement of the Cougar name, however…”
While, yeah, the mid size/BOF versions were not Pony, nor sporty/muscle cars, the PLC XR7 was a huge hit 1974-79. It’s what was selling, and Mercury wanted to use their most well known name [Sign of the Cat] on their whole mid size line.
XR7 coupe made $$$, but styles changed when Oil Crisis 2 hit like a Hurricane.
The 1983-97 Cougar, in coupe only, was more in the spirit of the originals.