Mercury Cougar
Classic · Mercury
Mercury Cougar: The Best-Selling Mercury of All Time
The Mercury Cougar is a nameplate Mercury used from 1967 to 2002 across eight generations, starting as an upscale pony car and ending as a sport compact hatchback. With 2,972,784 built, it was the highest-selling Mercury.
The first Cougar, for 1967, was built to sit between the Ford Mustang and the Thunderbird. It shared the Mustang's chassis but had its own body, grille, and lights, and it could be a pony car, a personal luxury coupe, or a muscle car. The Cougar GT ran for 1967 and 1968, and the 1969 and 1970 Eliminator package offered an available 428 Cobra Jet V8.
The car changed character more than once. In 1974 it moved to the Thunderbird platform, and as Mercury's mid-size line it was offered for a time as a four-door sedan and a station wagon alongside the Cougar XR-7 coupe. Mercury's 1970s and 1980s marketing leaned hard on the car, billing Lincoln-Mercury dealers as "The Sign of the Cat" with big cats on dealer signs, and cat names spread to the Bobcat and Lynx. Cougars were built in Dearborn, Michigan; San Jose, California; Lorain, Ohio; and Flat Rock, Michigan.
After the Thunderbird-based Cougar ended in 1997, Mercury skipped 1998 and brought the name back for 1999 as a sports compact hatchback, unveiled at the 1998 Los Angeles Auto Show and built at Flat Rock through 2002. A Cougar S with the Contour SVT engine was discussed in the press but never made it to production. Over its 34 years, only the Grand Marquis stayed in Mercury's lineup longer.