1969 Mercury Cougar XR7 Convertible "R" code 428-4V CJ Ram Air engine

Rare "R" code 428-4V CJ Ram Air engine, Factory A/C, am/fm radio, tilt steering wheel, leather seats, 78,330 three owner miles.

Restored 1969 Mercury Cougar one cool cat

When Tony Miglecz takes his tasty '69 Mercury Cougar to show-and-shines and cruise nights, he says "a lot of people just walk right on by. They think it's a Mustang."

On its introduction, the Mustang caused a sensation - and created a new segment for high-styled, small-sized personal cars. It didn't take long for other brands to jump on the ponycar bandwagon and one of those brands was Ford's companion brand, Mercury.

The tall foreheads at Ford Motor Company thought they discerned a gap in the product lineup between the Mustang and the Thunderbird. What was needed, they thought, was a car between the two in size and price that offered more luxury than the Mustang. They decided to have Mercury dealers sell the new offering, and called it the Mercury Cougar.

Introduced for the 1967 model year, the Cougar sold 150,893 copies in that first year. The 1968 style was very similar to that of the first-year car, but the '69 version was quite different. Sales that year were down, to just over 100,000, perhaps because Ford had pulled back on the Cougar's very successful racing effort.

In 1990, Tony Miglecz was driving through Inglewood on his way to look at a big-engined Ford Torino. As he passed a used car lot, he spotted a black '69 Cougar and ended up buying it. The two-door hardtop had just over 65,000 miles on it, but it was about to get some hard use.

"I drove it to the rig for five years," Miglecz says. "It's been out Forestry Trunk Road. It's been out to Grande Prairie and all areas north of Grande Prairie." While he was driving the car "all over Alberta," Miglecz says, he was rounding up good parts for its eventual restoration.

"Every year, I'd bring the car in and spend $1,000 on it," he says. Underneath, the car was improved with a negative wedge camber corrector, bigger front and rear sway bars and '71 Torino brakes. "It was a 351 Windsor two-barrel single exhaust car, so right away I got the dual exhaust on it and put on an Offenhauser dual-plane manifold with a four-barrel carb."

Ford products came with one of two 351 cubic inch engines in '69 - either the 351 Windsor or the 351 Cleveland, named after the engine plants where the power plants originated. The Cleveland, Miglecz says, was the engine of choice. "They make really good power. They sound completely different and it's a nice motor, too, to look at."

The Cougar's original Windsor engine did provide one benefit, he admits. "The undercarriage was in good shape. That's part of the 351 Windsor thing because the rear seal used to leak like crazy. On the way up to Grand Prairie I used to stop at Drayton Valley for a tank of gas and a litre of oil. That's what saved the floor - that 351 Windsor slobbering all over it."

Once he decided to get to work on the Cougar, Miglecz started using all those parts he had collected. "I always wanted a Cleveland (with a) four-speed," he says, and that is what now powers the car. One door that he had collected along the way proved to be something of a mystery as it was painted an odd purple colour that was never offered on production cars. What Miglecz discovered was that the door had come from one of 150 cars all painted the same shade and used by an insurance company.

The car, originally black, is now gold, he confides, because there used to be another black '69 Cougar in town that sometimes was driven in an overly-spirited manner. "I got into some trouble a few times because of that," Miglecz explains, "so I figured I'd change colours.

"When you get off work from the rigs, sometimes you're used to graveyards," Miglecz says. "I'd get up at two in the morning and go out to the garage. I always figured it was a successful week if I got one part done."

Something he found a bit liberating was that, unlike more popular cars with large fan bases, some of whom are purists that disparage any change from a car's original configuration, Cougars are just about unknown. This freed him to make some non-stock changes like the side scoops on the car, which came from a Mercury Marauder.

"When I put that side scoop on, 98 per cent of the population doesn't know that it doesn't belong on the car," he says. "I figured I could do anything to it. It's exactly the way I like it. I build them how I like them and if other people like them too, I'm glad to hear that."

1969 Mercury Cougar - Cat Balue

The blue '69 Mercury Cougar shown here belongs to Jason Bushman-a 19-year-old, dyed-in-the-wool Blue Oval fan from Edmonds, Washington. The good-looking cat has been lovingly restored by Jason and his father, with a little help from the folks at the Northwest Pony Shop. Jason tells us he was born into a Ford family and that he drives this car every day to school and to work. He and his dad certainly had their work cut out for them, as the '69 Cougar didn't always look this good.

The Bushmans discovered this car sitting forlornly at a construction site, the victim of a recent theft and recovery. All the glass had been smashed out and the upholstery was ripped to shreds, but they were not discouraged. For one thing, the Cougar still has its original 351 Windsor engine. Five hundred dollars did the trick for the pink slip, and then the massive amount of refurbishment work began.

The first thing to do was to strip the whole body down to bare metal. Once this was accomplished, Jason and his dad did most of the bodywork at home in the family driveway. The Northwest Pony Shop completed the details on the bodywork and the Cougar was painted '70 Mustang Grabber Blue in place of the original light-powder-blue color. Straight, crisp lines now show on the car's body, along with a perfect grille with the famous hide-away headlights. A fresh set of 14x7 Magnum 500 wheels shod with Pirelli rubber completes the outside look

The Cougar was originally equipped with the deluxe interior package, so new deluxe upholstery and carpeting bring things up to spec. The interior's original instrument cluster is in good condition and the OE Rim-Blow steering wheel is still present. The car was also equipped with the rare rear-window defogger option, while the sound department has been upgraded with an Alpine amplifier, a Sony CD player, and Pioneer speakers and sub.

When Jason and his family discovered the car, it had only 83,000 original miles. As the 351W engine ran just fine, they decided to leave well enough alone-for now. They carefully cleaned and detailed everything in the engine compartment. The engine looks good, sporting a set of Cobra rocker covers and a stock air-cleaner assembly. The only performance upgrades so far include an Edelbrock Performer 351 intake manifold and a 650-cfm, four-barrel carb.

The mild-mannered Windsor mill is connected to the original FMX three-speed automatic transmission, and power then goes back to a nine-inch axle with 3.00:1 gears. An Optima battery adds peace of mind. The whole package now runs low 15s.

All this hard work resulted in a First-Place finish at the Mustang Roundup teen class. The blue cat was also recently displayed at the Seattle Roadster show. We think it's safe to say that Jason does indeed come from a Ford family, as other notable Blue Oval cars in the Bushman stable have included a '69 Cougar Eliminator and a '67 Mustang 2+2. We think Jason sure is a lucky guy to have this great car, as well as such super support from his family.

This Blue Cougar Makes Us Green With Envy
By Wayne Cook
Photography by Jeff Ford

1969 Mercury Cougar "Black Cat"

Two Cougars TV Commercial - Hagerty Car Insurancee

1970 Mercury Cougar Eliminator

Kelowna Daily Courier - Was the Mercury Cougar a better Mustang?

At posted from the Kelowna- Daily Courier -Friday November 8th 2008 -Was the Cougar a better Mustang?
Donald Robichaud - 1969 Ivy Green Mercury Cougar

Pity the poor Mercury-Lincoln dealers back in the mid-1960s.
Flush with acres of Continentals, Park Lanes and Montclairs, not to mention a few assorted econobox Comets, these folks could only stare in hopeless exasperation as eager prospects flocked down the road to the nearest Ford store.
Why?
The new Mustangs had arrived.

The birth of Lee Iacocca’s baby had resulted in a severe case of mass automotive hysteria and ushered in an era of pony-car madness. Suddenly, every North American manufacturer was chomping at the bit to cash in on this latest car craze.

But Ford’s long-suffering Mercury retailers would have to wait nearly two-and-a-half years after the Mustang’s ground-breaking introduction before they could add some sporty car spice to their meat-and-potatoes lineup.

When the Mercury Cougar finally arrived in the fall of 1966, it was one of several fresh entries into the pony-car race, including the Chevrolet Camaro, Pontiac Firebird and Plymouth’s clean-sheet second-generation Barracuda.

Mercury took a decidedly different approach with the Cougar. Early advertising touted its luxury car leanings with the tag line, “The Fine Car Touch inspired by the Continental.” Also promoted was the Cougar’s comfortable ride and equally plush bucket seats.

The new “Cat” was built using a Mustang chassis, but its wheelbase had been increased by about seven centimetres. The extra distance created a far more hospitable environment for rear-seat passengers and added to the car’s passenger-friendly ride.

Visually, the Cougar was a pleasant piece. Along with its must-have long-hood, short-deck styling, the car featured unique hidden headlights that remained cloistered behind the front grille until pressed into service. But the real knockout feature was the car’s sequential rear signal lights that strobed in the appropriate direction whenever the stalk indicator was flicked.

Unlike the Mustang, the Cougar was available only with V8 power. The base engine was a 200-horse, 289-cubic-inch unit, while a 225-horsepower, four-barrel-carb version was available as an option.

If this wasn’t enough, the optional GT package featured a more muscular 390 cubic-inch V8 stuffed between the Cougar’s shock towers. Midway into the 1967 model year, Mercury introduced the Cougar XR-7, complete with full gauges, woodgrain interior trim, leather seats and other fancy bits.

First-year sales of more than 150,000 Cougars proved the public was hungry for a ponycar with a little more flair and substance than the rest of the field.
For 1968, the Cougar received the new 302 cubic-inch V8, as well as the horsepower-abundant 428 and racing-oriented 427 cubic-inch V8 options that cranked out 335 and 390 horsepower, respectively.

That year also saw the creation of one of the rarest of Cougar models, the XR7-G. The “G” stood for racing legend Dan Gurney. This model included a special fibreglass hood complete with scoop (non functional, though) and racing-style locking pins, fog lamps, special alloy wheels and interior trim. Only 619 XR7-Gs were shipped from the factory and, of those, slightly fewer than 200 went to Hertz to be used as rental units.

In 1969, the mildly restyled Cougar family grew to include both a base and XR-7 convertible. You could still order the big-block 428 motor, but the raunchier 427 was trimmed from the order sheet. A new 351 cubic-inch-engine series became available that year, with output ranging from 250-300 horsepower.

The hot setup that year became the Eliminator, with its wilder colours, look-at-me decals and striping plus a rear-deck spoiler. All of these items might have worked on any other pony car, but the Eliminator package only served to make the sleek, sophisticated Cougar look decidedly undignified.The Cougar remain basically unchanged through 1970, although the 390 V8 had finally disappeared from sight.

Sales, however, dropped as pony-car buyers shifted to more high-performance offerings that were being heavily marketed by the competition. This seemed to be the signal for Mercury’s product planners to turn the Cougar into a true boulevard cruiser.

Although the 1971 version continued to used the Mustang’s platform, the car became significantly bigger, stouter and pricier, with more luxury touches included as part of its standard features.

But for four solid years, the Cougar represented a softer, more eloquent interpretation of the pony-car revolution and gave its proud owners a taste of how future “personal luxury” cars would evolve.

These days, the Cougar is rapidly gaining in popularity among collectors who consider its unique and tasteful styling and plenty of on-tap power to be a cut above the Mustangs, Challengers and Camaros of that era.
It’s funny, but those are the exact same reasons the original Cougar became such a sales success in the first place.

Malcolm Gunn is a feature writer with Wheelbase Communications. He can be reached at wheelbase.ws/mailbag.html. Wheelbase Communications supplies automotive news and features to newspapers and websites across North America.