1967 Mercury Cougar: Mercury's First Pony Car, and a Trans-Am Title Lost by Two Points

Mercury's pony car went on sale on September 30, 1966, according to Over-Drive, and it arrived pitched somewhere between two Fords. The fact sheet places the Cougar between the Mustang and the Thunderbird, combining the attributes of a pony car and a personal-luxury car, and gives its base price as $2,854, which it says was $284 more than the equivalent Mustang. A fully optioned XR-7, the same source says, reached about $4,500, close to the price of an entry-level Thunderbird. It was a single body, a two-door hardtop, on a 111-inch wheelbase: in Over-Drive's summary, a pony car with personal-luxury manners.^1,2

Its styling did the selling first. Over-Drive describes it as the first Lincoln-Mercury car with hidden headlamps, behind vacuum-operated doors in a split grille of vertical chrome bars, and says its sequential rear turn signals were adopted from the Thunderbird, flashing in order behind a slatted rear panel. The body was 190.3 inches long, 71.2 wide and 51.8 high, with a published curb weight of 2,988 pounds for the base hardtop, and it rode on 7.35-14 four-ply tires as standard. Nineteen paint colors are listed, from Sheffield Silver and Cardinal Red to Tiffany Blue, Lime Frost and Cinnamon Frost.¹

Underneath it was a Ford small-block car with room for a big-block. The standard engine was a 289 two-barrel rated at 200 horsepower, gross; a 289 four-barrel was rated at 225, and the GT's 390 four-barrel, which the club's GT registry calls the Marauder V8, at 320 horsepower and 427 lb-ft. Over-Drive also lists the 271-horsepower Hi-Po 289, but the VIN decoder's 1967 table omits it and no installations are documented. Buyers could have a three-speed manual, a four-speed or the Merc-O-Matic automatic, but Over-Drive's compilation says only 5.3 percent of 1967 Cougars had the four-speed.^3,1,4

The GT package was the performance Cougar. Over-Drive lists its content as the 390 with a special handling package, wide-oval whitewall tires, low back-pressure dual exhausts, power disc brakes and identifying medallions, and puts the 390 engine alone at $265 on the option list. The Cougar Club of America's production tables, credited to Marti Auto Works, count 5,791 GT standard hardtops and 2,673 GT XR-7s, 8,464 in all. Against the 150,893 Cougars built, that is about 5.6 percent, roughly one Cougar in eighteen. The 390 also brought its own gearing: a 3.00 axle standard and 3.25 optional.^1,2

A far more popular package carried a racing driver's name rather than a racing engine. The club's registry describes the Dan Gurney Special as turbine wheel covers, F70-14 wide-oval whitewalls, chromed engine dress-up and a signature decal, and its production tables count 15,166 standard hardtops and 4,617 XR-7s with it, 19,783 in all. That is about 13.1 percent of the year's Cougars and more than twice the number of GTs. Gurney's name sold appearance; the 390 sold speed, and in 1967 buyers took the name more often than the engine.^5,2

The XR-7 arrived at midyear and pushed the car further toward the Thunderbird. Over-Drive describes a simulated wood-trim dashboard with full black-face instrumentation, toggle switches and an overhead console. The club counts 27,209 XR-7 hardtops, about 18 percent of the total; Over-Drive's narrative gives 27,221. The two sources also split on the bench-seat hardtop, 7,395 in the club's table against 7,412 in Over-Drive's, and Over-Drive's 123,672 standard Cougars does not match the club's rows. The club's body-code rows lead because they add exactly to the 150,893 total both sources share.^1,2,6

By any of those counts the Cougar changed Lincoln-Mercury. Over-Drive's compilation says it accounted for nearly 40 percent of the division's 1967 sales, and it records that the Cougar was named Motor Trend's 1967 Car of the Year. The option list shows how buyers could build the personal-luxury half of the formula: air conditioning at $355.95, power disc brakes at $84.25, power steering at $95.00, a tilt wheel at $60.05, styled steel wheels at $115.15 and an AM radio with Stereo-Sonic tape at $188.50. The bench seat that defined the 65C body cost $24.42 and found 7,395 takers by the club's count.^1,2

Mercury also sent the Cougar racing. Bud Moore Engineering's own history says the Lincoln-Mercury Division tapped Moore to lead a factory effort in the SCCA's Trans-Am series, impressed by his NASCAR results with a Mercury Cyclone the year before even though he had no road-racing experience. His drivers were Parnelli Jones, Dan Gurney and Peter Revson. The season table in Wikipedia's account credits Cougars with four over-two-liter wins: Gurney at Green Valley on April 16, Revson at Lime Rock on May 30 and at Bryar on August 6, and a fourth at Riverside in September. Moore's history also counts four victories.^7,8

The championship went to the last round and to Ford. The Wikipedia table gives the over-two-liter manufacturers' title to Ford with 64 counted points and Mercury second with 62, Chevrolet third with 57; Moore's history and Over-Drive both put the margin at two points. Mark Donohue's Camaro won the final two rounds, at Stardust and Pacific Raceways, by the same table. Over-Drive adds that the loss was a huge marketing success anyway. Mercury had lost to its own corporate sibling: the table credits Jerry Titus's Mustang with four of the season's over-two-liter wins.^8,7,1

The packages the first year created kept moving after it. The club's tables count 11,899 standard-hardtop Dan Gurney Specials for 1968 and a single XR-7, so the name survived a second season before disappearing; its two-year total is 31,683. The GT shrank to 955 standard hardtops and 1,845 XR-7s. In its place at the top came the GT-E, 394 cars in 1968 split between 357 W-code and 37 R-code engines, and an XR-7G of which the club counts 188 for Hertz and 434 for everyone else. The 1967 GT, at 8,464 cars, accounts for three of every four of the 11,264 GTs the club counts for 1967 and 1968 together.²

Mercury did not come back for the rematch. Moore's history says that in 1968 Mercury gave him the job of winning NASCAR's Grand Touring championship instead, and that when he returned to Trans-Am in 1969 it was with Ford Mustangs. The showroom cooled too: the club counts 113,741 Cougars for 1968, about a quarter fewer than 1967. The first year remains the Cougar's largest, with 150,893 cars, a Car of the Year award, and a Trans-Am season that came within two points of the Mustang.^7,2,1