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Mercury built the 1969 Cougar Eliminator to look like a street brawler, then sold most of them with engines other than the one this car carries. Only 260 buyers out of 2,250 checked the box for the 390 four-barrel FE big block, making it the quiet outlier in an already uncommon package. Here is why the underdog engine deserves a second look.
Mercury launched the Cougar in 1967 and immediately took Motor Trend’s Car of the Year award away from the brand-new Chevrolet Camaro. Built on a Mustang platform stretched three inches, it added hidden headlights, sequential taillights, and a level of refinement Ford’s own pony car never attempted. Nearly 151,000 sold in the first year, about forty percent of the entire division’s volume. Here is what made the first-year car work.
A lime-green Cougar so radically reworked that showgoers assumed it was a new model altogether — that was Mercury’s 1970 El Gato concept, unveiled at back-to-back auto shows before vanishing for good. It borrowed its fastback roofline from a Mustang, swapped its back seat for a European-style cargo shelf, and tested run-flat tire technology that failed spectacularly. Ford’s standard practice of destroying show cars means no one has documented seeing it since 1970. Here’s the story behind Mercury’s strangest concept car.
Mercury spent 1967 proving that a plusher, quieter Mustang could sell, then spent 1968 arming it with everything from a 230-horsepower 302 four-barrel to a 390-horsepower 427. This particular 1968 Cougar takes a different route entirely, pairing a worked-over small block with Vintage Air, Hooker headers and polished American Racing wheels. Read on to find out where it fits in the most underrated pony car lineup Ford Motor Company ever built.
Every car on this list has one thing in common: buyers keep paying a premium regardless of what else is happening in the market. Rarity, documented history, and a wave of nostalgia driven demand, especially from younger collectors introduced to these cars through film and pop culture, keep pushing prices for even once affordable muscle cars steadily upward. It is a reminder that horsepower alone was never the whole story.
Dodge arrived at the pony car party six years late and compensated by offering more engines than anyone else, from a 383 all the way to the 426 Hemi. The Challenger R/T was the sharp end of that lineup, and the cars that stayed with one family instead of getting flipped or raced into the ground are now the ones collectors chase hardest. Read on for what made the first-generation car special.
Ordering the top engine on a 1969 Mercury Cougar sounds simple enough. Doing it on an XR7 convertible turned this particular car into something closer to a unicorn. Mercury built roughly 100,000 Cougars that model year and the overwhelming majority left the factory nowhere near this combination of trim, body style, and 428 Cobra Jet Ram Air power. Read on for the production numbers and what Ford had to reinforce to keep the driveline alive behind that engine.
Ford built the Boss 302 for exactly one reason, and it had nothing to do with street driving. Handing that same high-revving, solid-lifter engine to a Mercury Cougar looks almost like an afterthought, yet that is what happened once the Eliminator package took over as Mercury’s performance flagship. Only 469 Cougars were built with it. This Competition Gold example is documented as a one-of-one. Read on for how a country-club coupe ended up with a race engine.
Mercury built the Cougar to sell refinement, with hidden headlights, a plusher cabin and advertising built around sophistication rather than stripes. Then Ford handed it the 428 Cobra Jet and refinement stopped being the point. Order sheets show fewer than 130 Ram Air Cobra Jet Cougars left the line that year in any body style, and convertibles built to this specification were rarer still. Read on for how a country-club car became one of the era’s hardest finds.
The 1969 Mercury Cougar was sold as the grown-up alternative to a Mustang, with more chrome, a longer wheelbase, and a quieter ride. It could also be ordered with a 428 Cobra Jet, and from April onward with a Boss 302 that no other Cougar could get. This Gateway Classic Cars gallery captures the third-year car. Read on for the option boxes that turned a luxury coupe into something else entirely.
This white Mercury Cougar could be a modest six-cylinder cruiser or one of the scarcest big-block muscle cars Mercury ever built, and the only way to tell is a small badge easy to miss. Only a fraction of 1969 Eliminators carried the largest engine Mercury offered that year. Read on to find out just how rare this one really is.
Dodge arrived to the pony car fight five years late and compensated by building an engine bay that would accept nearly anything Chrysler made, from a slant six to a 426 Hemi. This 1971 Challenger runs a 440 big block with a four-speed, which puts it one rung below the top and in the sweet spot for anyone who wants real E-body performance without a Hemi price. Read on for what the numbers actually say.