The 1987 Mercury Cougar LS dirt-cheap project is coming along nicely. The car was driving around a little bit and after some engine attention, was running better than ever. The 5.0L engine was happy to not be ingesting it’s own coolant through the throttle body and the fuel system was at least okay for the moment. We are ignoring the absolutely dead shocks and struts for the moment, and we knew that we had to get wheels to mount our race-spec tires on before we were legal to show up and fling this pile around NCM Motorsports Park. With that said, work continues… The Wheels, They Wobble… Up to this point, driving the Cougar had been limited to about 40 miles an hour around back country roads. That’s good enough for some trial testing to make sure nothing is going to kill me, but it was time to figure out if the car needed major attention. Now that the license plates and insurance policy made everything legal, I drove the car out to the nearest rural parkway and … [Read more...] about The Dirty Cougar: Safety Is Our Number One Priority Around Here!
Mercury cougar
The Dirty Cougar: Just A Little Bit Of Elbow Grease And The $400 Mercury Is Already Being Driven!
If you missed the first installment of the Dirty Cougar, Click Here! It’s been five days since we removed our latest bad idea, a $400 1987 Mercury Cougar LS, from a backyard in Evansville, Indiana and dragged it back to BangShift Mid-West. Five days. That’s all the time it’s taken to get the Cougar to the point where I’m a set of tires and wheels and a set of plates away from driving this car around more than just my neighborhood. In fact, since we first fired the car four days ago, we’ve put nearly fifty miles on the car already, performing shakedown tests on farm roads and trying to figure out what is good, what is bad and what really needs some time with a pressure washer. So far, this car is turning out to be the biggest bangs for the buck I’ve ever spent money on. I’m not lying in the least, either…the Cougar is good. Really good. We still need to do some tuning and fix a few things here and there, no doubt, but so far we’ve … [Read more...] about The Dirty Cougar: Just A Little Bit Of Elbow Grease And The $400 Mercury Is Already Being Driven!
The Dirty Cougar: The Beginning Of The Story Of Our $400 1987 Mercury Cougar!
This story starts off innocently enough: with the Cadillac limo on death row in a junkyard in Kentucky, there was a need for a replacement car to run at the King of the Heap winter racing series. And the three guys who ran with me on the first event were rookies to road racing and wanted to do more. I don’t need my arm twisted to go racing and to get something that provides content for you, readers, but we had a problem: the Cadillac’s 5,080 pound bulk only equaled a $333 payday at the scrappers. I was willing to add in to make it an even four hundred dollars (the money from scrapping the SN-95 Mustang shell would fit the bill easily), and while the others said they’d help, we all knew that this was cheap-ass racing at it’s finest…lowest possible entry price wins. With that in mind, Scott Renshaw, Chris Conn and I started ripping though every car-for-sale site that catered to the local area around Bowling Green to see what we could come up with. Early on, … [Read more...] about The Dirty Cougar: The Beginning Of The Story Of Our $400 1987 Mercury Cougar!
Rare Fox: This 1986 Mercury Cougar XR-7 Turbo Is A Nearly Extinct 80’s Performance Car You Probably Forgot Existed!
Just about every gearhead out there looks back fondly at their high school ride. Wile some of you may still have your first car, most everyone (myself included) sold their teenage chariot long ago. For me, it’s complicated: I had no less than four cars between my junior and senior years of high school. The first was a 1985 Honda Civic “Wagon/Van” thing that so bad it never made it to the road, and the second was a rusty 1964 Buick Skylark that was powered (and I use the term loosely) by a 225 “Fireball” V6 whose prime was left in 1967 or so. Numbers three and four were nearly identical 1987 Mercury Cougar XR-7’s. The story of their acquisition is a funny one: I had family who worked at a local dealership that had those “PUSH IT! PULL IT! TOW IT FOR GUARANTEED TRADE!!!!” promotions all the time, and their small wholesale lot overflowed with project fodder. They let employees snag cars prior to shipping them to the auction, and for some … [Read more...] about Rare Fox: This 1986 Mercury Cougar XR-7 Turbo Is A Nearly Extinct 80’s Performance Car You Probably Forgot Existed!
Automoblog Book Garage: The Complete Book of Classic Ford & Mercury Muscle Cars
The 2018 Mustang GT has the whole nine: a redesigned 5.0-liter V8, quicker response times for the 10-speed SelectShift transmission, and even custom-designed Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S tires in the Performance Pack. The new 5.0 registers 460 horsepower and 420 lb-ft. of torque, and hits 60 in less than four seconds in Drag Strip mode. If there ever was an American performance car, this is it. And modern technology has taken nicely to the great pony car. However, the glory days stand tall, thanks to the work of author Donald Farr, who penned this recently-released wonderful gem we are featuring this weekend. The new Mustang might be hot but these old Fords sure could stoke the fire. Total Performance The Complete Book of Classic Ford and Mercury Muscle Cars spans the Blue Oval’s catalog of classic machines from the early 1960s to 1973. Farr takes us through this prolific time, from the Fairlanes and Galaxies with their 390 bigblock V8s to the iconic Shelby … [Read more...] about Automoblog Book Garage: The Complete Book of Classic Ford & Mercury Muscle Cars