Posts Tagged: Mercury Cougar
A Bright Yellow 1969 Cougar Eliminator is headed to a no-reserve auction with its original G-code paperwork intact, proof it left Dearborn with Ford’s rare Boss 302 and a mandatory four-speed. Somewhere along the way that engine vanished in favor of a 351 and an automatic, and nobody wrote down why. Whoever buys it next has to decide whether the car’s real value is in what it is now, or what it once was.
The Cougar Eliminator replaced the Cougar GT on April 1, 1969, and just 302 of the 2,250 built left the factory with a 428 Cobra Jet under the scoop. Jay Leno spends an afternoon with one of the survivors — a big-block pony car with a genuine Trans-Am pedigree and a 335-horsepower rating almost nobody believes.
This blue Cougar XR-7 might just look like another 1970 pony car at first glance, but its wood-rimmed wheel and simulated walnut dash tell a different story. Mercury built it to feel like a personal luxury coupe, not a stripped-down performance car, and buyers agreed in far smaller numbers than you’d expect. Before casting a vote, here’s what actually separates this car from its Mustang cousin.
Gord Nelson had a bucket list, and near the top of it sat a Mercury Cougar Eliminator most muscle car fans overlook in favor of its Mustang cousin. When he found one buried in the newspaper classifieds, his wife told him to go get it. What he ended up with wears an engine rating that never quite matched what these cars could do at the strip. Read on to find out the real story under that Competition Orange hood.
Tucked inside a private muscle car collection that almost never sees the light of day sits a genuine unicorn: a 1968 Mercury Cougar GT-E built with the 427, an engine Ford discontinued after just 357 cars. Backyard Barn Finds got rare access to the collector behind it, a hands-on enthusiast who’s spent years assembling some of the rarest American muscle still surviving. This isn’t a car you’ll see at your local cruise night. Watch to see what else is hiding in that garage.
Everyone knows the Corvette skipped a model year and the Daytona’s wing was built for speed — but fewer people know that wing height was also a trunk-lid compromise, or that a handful of Dodge dealers once built the only production car to wear factory Cragar wheels. This rundown digs past the four facts every muscle car list repeats to the trivia that actually surprises collectors. Read on to find out which 1970 Super Bee variant was rarer than the Six Pack.
For a few months in early 1968, Ford’s legendary 427 side-oiler found its way into the last car anyone expected: a plush, chrome-trimmed Mercury Cougar GT-E. Only 357 of these cars ever left the factory with that engine, making it the final production application of Ford’s storied big-block before the 428 Cobra Jet took over. Read on to find out why this quietly luxurious pony car cousin still ranks among the rarest big-block Fords of its era.
