Cowards Too Afraid to Admit That the 1999 Mercury Cougar Is One of the Most Beautiful Cars Ever
I’m afraid I’m the only one thinking of the now defunct low-end luxury brand Mercury and its cars, but I shouldn’t be in the minority when I say that I think 1999 Mercury Cougar is one of the the most beautiful cars was ever sold in the US. I am a big fan of most of the Ford Motor Company new design like Ford Focus and Ford Ka but the 1999 Cougar was the first FoMoCo sold in North America with this prominent design theme. It was the first front-wheel drive Mercury Cougar never died, and unfortunately it became the last version of the Cougar nameplateBut above all, it’s a wonderful thing.
The first Mercury Cougar was introduced in 1967 as a slightly longer, slightly more upscale version of the wildly popular Ford Mustang. The first generation won over buyers with its hidden headlights and V8 engine options, and was the only Mercury to ever win a MotorTrend’s Car of the Year. Like all American cars, its later generations suffered from the hardships of the Malaise era and became oversized, underpowered land yachts, even becoming a family car at one point. The Cougar’s glory was revived in its sixth generation when it once again shared a platform with the Mustang, and the seventh-generation Cougar was built on the same dedicated platform as the Ford Thunderbird.
In 1999, Ford introduced the eighth-generation Cougar, which effectively moved from the previous generation’s two-door luxury coupe to a three-door, front-wheel-drive compact sports car. It used the Ford World Car platform, which also underpinned the Ford Contour in the U.S. and the Ford Mondeo in Europe, with its four-corner independent suspension and the platform’s highly regarded dynamic capabilities. Unfortunately for the Cougar’s performance image, the eighth-generation car was offered only with a fuel-efficient I-4 engine that made 125 horsepower and 130 pound-feet of torque or a 2.5-liter Duratec V6 that made 170 horsepower and 165 pound-feet of torque. Aside from its poor straight-line performance—MotorWeek could only muster a 0-60 mph time of 7.9 seconds with the top-of-the-line V6 and five-speed manual transmission—the Cougar is praised for its fun handling characteristics.
But it’s the striking styling that really sets this car apart. It has some of the curves that were so popular in 90s car design, but it manages to incorporate them without looking like a marshmallow. It has creases and sharp angles to break up the rounded shapes. It has graceful curves to most of its body lines, from the Cheshire Cat lower air intake, to the dramatic cat-eye headlights – it is named after a cat, after all – to the large rounded rear end with unique bulges on the giant triangular taillights. It’s a masterpiece of early 2000s Art Deco design without venturing into cheesy territory like the Chrysler Crossfire. The eighth-generation Mercury Cougar embodies both risk-taking and restraint in its design, and I think it deserves more love and recognition than it gets.
