"My Kinda Party" was the title song of Jason Aldean's fourth studio album that was released late in 2010. The single peaked at number-two on the Billboard Hot Country songs chart and was certified "Platinum", denoting sales of at least two-million. "My Kinda Party" was written and originally recorded by Brantley Gilbert in 2009. Warning, incoming old fashioned name drop incoming, the first time I met Brantley, I asked him what kind of car he was referring to in the lyric from the song, "got the cover off the sixty-eight". He didn't miss a beat saying, "'my '68 Cougar".
I knew I liked this kid. Here is a very young B.G. with his literal and figurative '68 he said he sold once for $4,000 to pay for his band to get back home to Georgia after a show in Texas. The guy he sold it to said he'd sell it back to him for what he paid for it but when Brantley went to do so, the guy went back on his word demanding $25,000. Long story short, after some negotiation and cajoling, Brantley got his '68 back.
The Ford Motor Company's late and most often time not-so-great middle priced division produced a "Cougar" in various guises on-and-off over 34-model years. In my opinion, the only model years that mattered are 1967, the first year it came out, and 1968 like B.G.'s and this $15,000 Facebook Marketplace find; save for side markers on the front fenders on '68 Cougars in compliance with federal regulations, the cars are the same. Subsequently, those were boom years for the nameplate and for the market segment Ford all but, excuse me, sired in 1964, when they, ahem, foaled the Mustang.
Ford sold nearly 681,000 Mustangs between its April 17, 1964 launch and the end of 1965 and by the end of the 1966 model year, Ford totaled near 1.3-million Mustangs sold making it the most successful new vehicle launch in automobile history. Not surprisingly, Mercury executives wanted a "Mustang" as well. A Mercury version was actually in the works alongside the original Mustang but Ford hedged their bets plowing all their marketing resources into one car and not two. Seeing the success of the Mustang, you could construe they focused and spent their money wisely. However, what was internally known as the "T-7", was to be a softer riding, luxury themed or tinged version of the Mustang. When Ford updated the Mustang for model year 1967, they allowed Mercury to introduce the "T-7"
Despite unique and quite handsome sheet metal stretched out on top of a three-inch longer wheelbase than the Mustang had, there were challenges with these cars right from the get go. Most of them circumstantial having nothing to do with the cars themselves.
First, with a softer suspension tuning and lacking some key luxury accoutrements like power windows, with the Cougar's on average $300 higher price tag, customers who bought into the pretense of an "American Jaguar" were hard to come by. And despite finding some 150,000 buyers in 1967 and around 113,000 for 1968, Ford surmised those sales came at the expense of not only the Mustang, but sales of Mercury Comet's, Mercury's at the time intermediate offering. Not only did Mercury's market share not increase, the Ford Motor Company's as a whole didn't either.
At least it had its to-die-for good looks. Along with funky, pointless cool doo-dads like concealed head lights and rear turn signals that blinked like the sequential tail lamps on Ford's hallowed Thunderbird did. Mercury even marketed these cars as being for the, get this, "man on his way to a Thunderbird". Ford had been experimenting with the this slotted, electric razor type front end for years before finally dropping it on the Cougar.
Circumstantially, in 1967, General Motors came out with two ponies to compete with Ford's duo splitting the pony car blade of grass further. Sales were remarkably strong for the segment through the end of '60's, Chrysler's pony was the Plymouth Barracuda (Dodge didn't get one until 1970), but by the end of decade, it seemed those who wanted one got theirs and didn't repeat buy or were put off by insurance surcharges that tacked on a steep tariff to anything remotely construed as a performance car.
Mercury built the Cougar on the same chassis as the Ford Mustang through 1973 doing a debatably ample job of disguising its Mustang's underpinnings. For 1974, Mercury lightly disguised a Ford Torino Elite as a "Cougar" thrusting the moniker into the burgeoning "personal luxury car" niche where it stayed stuck through 1997. A snappy performing but odd-looking coupe based on the Ford Contour debuted for MY 1998 through 2003. Them, sorry, Brantley and Janson, but the party was over. On an upside, Mercury sold more "Cougars" in their various guises than any other of their nameplates over its protracted 71-year existence.
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