Classic Mercury Cougar

• Cougars represented almost 50% of Mercury Sales for 1967
  
  
• In 1968, you could get a 427 motor in a Cougar, but not a Mustang.
  
  
• A 1973 Mercury Cougar XR7 was the last Mercury convertible
  
  
• The 1989 Cougar XR7's 210hp V-6 was America's first supercharged six cylinder since the 1955 Kaiser Manhattan

• The Cougar was originally referred to as “T-7”
  
  
• The "XR" model designation refers to "Experimental Racing"
  
  
• Gayle Warnock Director of Public Relations at Ford and his assistant Bill Peacock, are given credit for the creation of the Cougar nameplate

The snarling cougar who sat atop Lincoln Mercury’s Cougars for so many years, and appeared in countless television and magazine ads, name was “Chauncey”. Chauncey was born in 1964 and was rented from Animal World in California.

Poor Chauncey had a bad hip, and couldn’t jump very far so when he had to jump up on a sign, it had to be a low one! According to Gayle Warnock, who was the PR director for Ford Motor Company at the time, Chauncey’s distinctive snarl was a reflex action in an attempt to protect himself, because he couldn’t fight back due to the bad hip.

Chauncey won the distinctive P.A.T.S.Y. Award (The animal equivalent of the "Oscars," (Picture Animal Top Star of the Year) in 1969 for his work in promoting the Cougar.

Chauncey went to Cougar Heaven in 1975 and was replaced by Christopher, Jimmy, and Frisky who all appeared in “The Sign of The Cat” TV commercials.

The initial ad campaign touting the Cougar was created by Gayle Warnock (who incidentally was in charge of the Edsel's PR work) and Bill Peacock in late 1966 . These two Ford Motor Company PR guys came up with some very unique promotional schemes to introduce the 1967 Cougar. Among them included:

• Mailing 300 newsmen each 4 fortune cookies from Hong Kong, each cookie included it’s own unique “Cougar Message”...
  
  

• The mailing to 300 automotive writers of “mysterious messages” from a hunter from Cougar, Washington written on crumpled brown paper sacks indicating that he had “caught a glimpse of a cougar, and it’s even more beautiful than you’ve read....lean, powerful, sleek, cool, aloof, perfectly balanced, fast and elusive.” The notes indicated the hunter would send evidence of his hunting skills and urged them to “make room in their refrigerator.”

• A few days later, they all received a 6lb. package of specially seasoned cougar shaped sirloin patties.....identified as “CougarBurgers”

• Mercury soon was offering the CougarBurger Barbecue Set, and a cougar shaped cookie cutter so you could make your very own “CougarBurgers” at home.

• A low flying plane was commissioned to fly at low altitudes of major cities at night with a pulsating electric sign that read “Mercury unleashes Cougar”.

• On September 16th,1966 men using an opaque projector flashed a silhouette of the Cougar emblem on the GM building in Detroit.