Mercury Cougar - Mercury Microcosm

The Ford Motor Company created their Mercury division in 1938 as an entry level premium brand that was, succinctly, to compete directly with General Motor's "mid-priced" triumvirate of Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Buick. It also was to bridge the sizeable price gap between their Ford and Lincoln brands. Almost from the get-go, though, Ford struggled defining what a "Mercury" was as most offerings  amounted to little more than either a dressed-down Lincoln, a gussied up Ford or as was the case with early Cougars like our '72 here, a literal hybrid of the Lincoln and Ford divisions. 

Can a mash up of a pony car and luxury car work? Frankly, no - although Ford's attempt to do so  started out pleasantly if not surprisingly well. Originally seen as a "gentleman's Mustang" the original Mercury Cougar for 1967, above is an ad for '68's, was a luxury-tinged if not themed, extended wheelbase Mustang with unique sheet metal and a oh-so-swingin' '60's interior. They threw in a dollop of performance pretense and the first Cougar sort of made sense as an American-ized Jaguar XKE. Ford even went so far as to bill the car for "the man on his way to a Thunderbird". Ok. If you say so. That axiom counter-intuitive since Mercury, again, was allegedly marketed one rung above the Ford division. Go up to go...down? 

To confuse matters more, Ford entered Cougar in Trans Am racing so it competed with Mustang not only in showrooms but on race tracks. That was quickly scuttled as Ford executives realized that racing ran counter to their attempts to cull Mercury as a junior executive brand not to mention usurping the cash-cow Mustang's image as Ford's premier performance moniker. Didn't help matters either that starting in 1969 Ford had a somewhat luxury slanted version of the Mustang they called "Grande". Furthermore, Ford deduced that Cougar sales were coming out of sales of Mercury's intermediate offerings and wasn't actually boosting Mercury sales. Poor little Cougar. You didn't stand a chance. 

Based on the Mustang, Cougar was strapped to Mustang's redesign schedule. That meant Cougar's unfortunate update in 1969 and then the 1971 crash and burn that our bronze beauty here was a part of. In vacuum, honestly, this isn't a bad looking car but cars aren't sold in vacuums and in a rapidly shrinking sporty car market, a sports-luxury car made little to no sense. Especially seeing that in addition to competing with the Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Firebird, Cougar competed with the Pontiac Grand Prix and Chevrolet Monte Carlo. The latter GM models being first and foremost luxury cars with a hint of sportiness. That's important to note since most people, particularly all-important female buyers, value luxury, comfort and convenience far more than performance.  

Each subsequent update of the Cougar resulted in startlingly lower sales year over year and many executives at Ford, junior and senior alike I'd have to imagine, lobbied for dropping the moniker altogether after 1973. 

That's what they did, technically as they moved the Cougar nameplate out of the Mustang's lane and onto their intermediate chassis. Doing so gave Mercury a turnkey personal luxury car and it worked to some degree seeing Cougar sales rose dramatically from 1973 to 1974 although they never got back to where they were in 1967 and 1968. 

The herking and jerking of whatever a Mercury Cougar was supposed to be didn't end in 1974. While "Mercury Cougar" meant personal luxury car from 1974-1976, if you're of a certain vintage you may faintly recall Mercury's entire intermediate line was branded as Cougar's from 1977 through 1982. Complete with, yah, you guessed it, a 1982 only station wagon. 

Things settled down somewhat come 1983 as "Mercury Cougar" once again was, exclusively, a personal luxury car. And one based on the able bones of Ford's Fox-body chassis that it shared much mechanically and somewhat stylistically with the Thunderbird (and Lincoln Mark VII). However, whether ever fickle coupe-buyers became disenfranchised with what manufacturers offered or found other compelling options, through the 1980's and 1990's the market for personal luxury cars, pony cars too, withered. 

Ford discontinued both the Thunderbird and Cougar after the 1997 model year. Although, Thunderbird came back as an abortive retro-themed two-seater from 2002-2005. What was even more odd was the Cougar nameplate appearing from 1999-2002 on a front-wheel drive sports coupe derived from the Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique. If you're keeping score, counting these little hatchbacks which were actually the best Cougars ever based simply on driving dynamics, there were five different iterations of what "Mercury Cougar" meant over the years.  

Could the Ford Motor Company have done anything with the Mercury Cougar to ensure it's viability? Well, it's all to easy to play armchair product planner and say what they could have or should have done. Same to be said for what they could have done with their Mercury division as a whole. For certain, if you're looking for a microcosm of the Mercury division and the struggles that Ford had with it, it's the Mercury Cougar.