A 1967 Mercury Cougar that spent two decades parked now carries a 504-cubic-inch Ford FE stroker making 750 horsepower with no turbo, blower, or nitrous. AutotopiaLA’s street ride-along shows why viewers can’t stop talking about the front end coming up on every gear change.
Mercury’s biggest factory Cougar engine was the 428 Cobra Jet, and Ford never put anything larger than 7.0 liters under that long hood. The owner of this 1967 Cougar decided that wasn’t enough. After the car spent more than twenty years parked in a garage, he pulled the original 390 and dropped in a 504-cubic-inch FE-based big block that makes 750 horsepower on nothing but air, fuel, and compression — no turbo, no supercharger, no nitrous. Every piece of chrome on the body was painted black, the tires out back are borderline drag radials, and the transmission is a stick. Viewers of AutotopiaLA’s ride-along keep fixating on one detail: the front end lifting and the rear tires lighting up on every single gear change. This is the Cougar Mercury never had the nerve to build.
Eight Minutes of a Ford Big Block Doing Exactly What It Was Built For
The AutotopiaLA episode runs eight and a half minutes and skips the usual restomod walk-around formula in favor of the thing everyone actually clicked for: a 750-horsepower, naturally aspirated Mercury Cougar being driven hard on public streets. The channel’s description keeps it blunt — a ’67 Cougar with a 504-cubic-inch big block and a manual transmission, “so sit back and enjoy the ride.” That is about the extent of the spec sheet provided, which fits a car whose owner clearly cares more about driving it than cataloging it. What the video delivers instead is sound: a big-inch FE idling with that lumpy, cammed cadence, then clearing its throat through the gears while the rear tires struggle to keep up. More than 400,000 people have watched it, and over a thousand have left comments.
The build’s backstory adds weight to the footage. This Cougar left the factory as a 390-powered GT and then sat in a garage for more than two decades before being brought back as a street-legal drag car. The 504 is a stroked FE-family Ford — the same engine architecture behind Ford’s 390, 427, and 428 — displacing 8.3 liters, and according to coverage of the build it can make more than 750 horsepower but was deliberately tuned below its ceiling for reliability. Outside, the car keeps its stock 1967 shape, but every bit of brightwork has been painted black over a dark gray body. Viewers who have watched it have been struck by two things above all: how often the nose comes up under power, and how rare it is to see a modern, high-horsepower FE build instead of the usual LS swap. One of the most-liked comments simply celebrates that nobody put a Chevy engine in it.
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The Pony Car Mercury Built to Outclass the Mustang
The Cougar arrived for 1967 as Lincoln-Mercury’s answer to a problem of Ford’s own making. The Mustang had been a runaway hit since April 1964, and Mercury dealers had nothing to sell against it. The solution was to take the Mustang platform, stretch the wheelbase three inches to 111, and wrap it in a body that looked nothing like its donor: a vertical-bar “electric shaver” grille with the headlights hidden behind doors, and a matching rear panel with sequential turn signals borrowed from the 1965-66 Thunderbird. The Cougar name itself had been on Ford’s shortlist for the Mustang in 1962 before Lee Iacocca settled on the pony. For the full story of the 1967 Mustang redesign this car was built on top of, see our deep dive here: Lee Iacocca Was Nervous About the 1967 Mustang Redesign.
Mercury positioned the Cougar as a more mature, better-appointed Mustang and priced it accordingly, with a base price of $2,851 — about $350 more than a comparable Mustang — and the upscale XR-7, with its simulated woodgrain dash, black-faced gauges, and row of toggle switches, starting at $3,081. Engines began with the 289 two-barrel at 200 horsepower and the 289 four-barrel at 225, but the one that mattered to enthusiasts was the GT package’s 390-cubic-inch four-barrel “Marauder” V8 at 320 horsepower, which also brought power front disc brakes, low-restriction exhaust, and wide-oval tires. That 390 is the engine this video’s Cougar was born with — the same FE family it still carries, just 114 cubic inches larger.
The market’s verdict was immediate. Mercury planned for about 85,000 first-year Cougars and sold 150,893, nearly 40 percent of Lincoln-Mercury’s entire volume, and Motor Trend named it 1967 Car of the Year — the only Mercury ever to win the award. The one-year-only “Man’s Car” ad campaign was dropped for 1968, but the performance story kept escalating: the 1968 GT-E put a 390-horsepower 427 FE, the last factory 427 Ford sold, into just 357 cars before the 428 Cobra Jet arrived as a mid-year option on April 1, 1968. Every one of those engines shares its bones with the 504 in this video, which is why the build feels like a factory what-if rather than a swap.
Why 504 Inches of FE Matters More Than the Horsepower Number
Seven hundred fifty horsepower is not a shocking figure in 2026 — a stock Hellcat Redeye makes 797 with a supercharger. What makes this Cougar special is how it gets there. Naturally aspirated FE builds at this displacement are rare; most people chasing 750 horsepower in a 1960s Ford body reach for a modern Coyote, an LS, or a blower, all of which are easier and cheaper. Committing to a stroked FE means honoring what a 1967 Cougar GT was in the first place — a big-block Ford with a manual transmission — and simply removing the ceiling. The de-chromed, dark gray exterior does the same thing visually: it is still unmistakably a ’67 Cougar, hidden headlights and all, but with the polite Mercury brightwork stripped away.
There is also the matter of the Cougar’s reputation. For decades it has been the pony car nobody talks about, overshadowed by the Mustang it was built from even though it was longer, quieter, better trimmed, and — as more than a few viewers argue — better looking. A build this loud and this unapologetic does more for the Cougar’s standing than another concours restoration would. It is proof that the platform will take everything a big FE can throw at it, and that a nearly 60-year-old Mercury can still stop a car show cold the moment the hood comes up.
Watch the full video above and let us know your thoughts in the comments.
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