Guess what day it is! It’s the first Friday of 2023! And you know what that means, right? It means it’s time for Mercury Monday! Yes, Mercury Monday on a Friday, because I keep forgetting to do these and if I’m honest don’t really care about consistency or anything like that, which is why so many parts of my life are a mess, if I’m honest. Look, the fact that I’m talking about Mercurys at all here on the pages of the Internet’s Biggest Car Website (don’t check that) should be considered a fucking gift to every Mercury-lover in the known universe, so let’s all just calm down. Are we calm? Good. Now, let’s get amped up again, because we’re going to be talking about a truly under-appreciated and nearly-forgotten Mercury: the eighth (and last) generation Cougar.
Yes, that Cougar. I bet the last time you can remember seeing one your life was in a very, very different place, because these are almost extinct and have been for quite some time. They’re pretty much all on Ghost Car status now, which is, I think, a shame, and we’ll get into why. The eighth (that word never looks right to me, by the way. I mean, over 66% of that word is “ghth” which reads like the sound you make when you walk crotch-first into a fire hydrant. Also, right now, try saying the plural of “eighth,” which “eighths.” Go on, say it out loud. Eighths. Eighths. Ew, it feels so weird.) generation was sold for the model years 1999 to 2002, and was a real break from Cougar tradition in so many ways.
It was the first transverse-engined, FWD Cougar. The first hatchback Cougar. The first Cougar that didn’t necessarily drink gas like a drunk elephant. And, significantly, the first Cougar that wasn’t a Mercurized version of a Ford product. Remember, the first two generations of Cougar were slightly upmarket-ed and chrome-slathered and over-fake-grilled variants of Mustangs, then the next two gens were versions of Torinos, then the next two were Fox-chassis versions of Thunderbirds or Granadas, then the next-gen Thunderbird.
The eighth Cougar was based on the Contour/Mondeo world car platform, but there was no Ford equivalent car that it was re-badged from. There may have been, since it started life as a new version of the Ford Probe, but in the end it stood alone as a unique Mercury, though in global markets that lacked the Mercury brand, it was badged as a Ford Cougar, which may make it the first Mercury to be re-badged as a Ford, in some exciting opposite-day shenanigans. Maybe some commenter will prove me wrong, but at this moment I can’t think of another Mercury that got re-badged to a Ford.
I’ll admit that I hadn’t thought about these cars in a long time, so when I started looking back at them, I was pleasantly surprised; these things aged well, I think. A lot of that has to do with the fact that this Cougar was the first Mercury to make it to market to feature Ford’s New Edge design language, which I think overall has aged quite well. The New Edge look defined the visual vocabulary of the Cougar, which featured crisp, clean, flowing lines, an actual respect for panel cutlines, which were used to define the shapes of the lighting units and air intakes.
The look was teased with the 1997 Mercury concept car known as the MC2, and it had a more pure New Edge look with more dramatic curves and angles and, interestingly, a more traditional Mercury waterfall grille hiding in that little arched maw, something that wasn’t retained for the production car, which was impressively free of Mercury’s usual fixation on adding a bunch of chrome trim bits and details.
I always liked the taillights on these, too, with their angular shape but also with those two inset hemispheres growing out of them, like geometric and non-unsightly pimples. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to put the Cougar – and a lot of the Ford New Edge cars – in the same general category of Good 1990s/Early 2000s car design along with cars like the Audi TT. There’s similar motifs of cleanliness and geometry and precision that are pretty timeless.
Even after over 20 years I think this car looks tidy and modern and sleek. It’s handsome and unfussy, and the heavily raked beltline emphasizes the sports-coupé feel. This whole category of car – the sporty coupé, is pretty rare today. Cars like the Toyota 86 or Supra or BMW 2 series are similar in coupé-ishness and size, but they’re all much more serious about their performance and sporting character. The Cougar was just sporty, in that you’d use it to get to work and get groceries and fill the hatch with bags of peat moss and pick up your buddies to go bowling or whatever, but when you’d turn and look back on it in the parking lot, or gun it a bit when getting onto a highway on-ramp, you’d get a little tingle of I-drive-a-sports-car in your bathing suit areas. Just enough to keep things fun.
It’s a hatchback with more fun proportions and I suppose a more cramped back seat; really, for a lot of drivers, what’s not to like about this?
Commercials played up the sporty nature of the car, and in that one above, you get some nice emphatic gear-shifting, too, because that’s how you know fun is being had. The spy thing was a bit of a series for these Cougar ads, and Ford must have taken it pretty seriously, because, look, they got Udo Kier to star in them as the undeterminedly-foreign bad guy!
Damn, that spy is fantastic at disguises! And fast, too!
Other ads and brochures definitely continued to emphasize the sportiness, and relied heavily on the late ’90s/early 2000s love of the word and concept of “attitude.” Why did we like that so much? I feel like today we’d call the same traits we meant by “attitude” just “being a dick.” Maybe I’m wrong.
As far as if it was able to cash the checks its sporty looks were writing, I think the answer is that, for the era, pretty much? You could get the Cougar with either a 2-liter four-cylinder Zetec engine that made a respectable but not really notable 125 horsepower, or a Duratec V6 with 500cc more than the four that made a genuinely decent 170 hp. Remember, a significantly more expensive FWD sports coupé of the same era, the Audi TT, was making only 10 hp more. It wasn’t bad!
There were MacPherson struts up front and a quadlink rear suspension, with a rear anti-roll bar, and while I don’t think I’ve ever actually driven one of these, I suspect that they were likely on par with other sports coupés of the time. I mean, MotorWeek seemed to think it was pretty okay:
They especially liked the variable-ratio steering and the exhaust sound, the latter of which kinda surprised me. Also, it seems that cable-actuated shifter is smooth as sex-butter, and you got the Contour SVT’s antilock brake system with the V6 (optional for the four). Hell, they said it had “superb handling!” Their only real complaint was that the back seats might be tough for ample-assed friends. Still, overall, pretty glowing review! A John Davis glowing review!
Today, in the absurd Year of Our Ford 2023, it’s hard to think of a mainstream car more forgotten than the Last Cougar. You pretty much never see them on the roads, and the closest one in anything like my personal orbit is probably the one that was owned by our own Stephen Walter Gossin, but that one caught on fire on the side of the road and is now in Mercury heaven, which is interestingly located in the orbit of Venus, not Mercury.
At least you get a nice view of that lovely intake manifold with the charred hood torn off, so that’s a plus. Stephen also gave me a bit of insight as to why these Cougars are all but extinct in their natural habitat of our nation’s roads: they’re a pain to work on. Here’s one example:
If a guy like Stephen, who’s tolerances for what is or isn’t worth putting time and effort to keep running far eclipses that of most normal, healthy humans, is saying it’s better to junk the car, then that definitely means something. It could be that this otherwise charming and appealing little sporty fella just had too many ass-pain Achilles’ heels like this power steering hose, and they ended up all junked when something like this – that could have been a reasonable repair on another car – failed.
Mercury is itself something of a ghost marque, and I think this Cougar is among the ghostiest of Mercuries. You’re more likely to see an old ’60s Cougar or even a Fox-body Capri than an eighth-gen Cougar in the wild. It’s also a shame the Cougar name died with this car, too, because I do love evocative animal names for cars. Of course, the modern slang of a sexually aggressive older woman who seeks out younger partners may have rendered the name an unlikely future choice, but who knows?
Anyway, if you see one of these, I suggest taking a moment to stop and appreciate this handsome and now uncommon lithe cat. And happy Monday on Friday.
Everyone Forgets About Mercury So We’re Solving That With ‘Mercury Monday’
Mercury Monday: The Mercury Cougars Of The 1980s Are The Fox Bodies Everyone Forgot About
The Mercury Bobcat Was A Lesson In The Barest Definition Of Luxury: Mercury Monday (On Friday!)
The Mercury Villager Nautica Always Reminded Me Of This Particular Shoe: Mercury Monday
Mercury Monday: The Un-American Mercury Tracer, The Econobox With A Miata Engine
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This car perfectly embodies 1999: a pointless product that tens of thousands purchased
I think this is the spiritual descendant to the “It’s not a Mercury, but it’s sold at Mercury dealers” Capri. It’s a “sporty” coupe, loosely based on an existing sedan platform.
I’m going to be that guy today. I purchased new and still own my 2002 final year Cougar XR edition. The circumstances that lead to this car being with me were as follows: Just secured my first real job after graduating college. Growing up in a very frugal and practical household the idea of anything RWD for regular use just wasn’t going to work in New England. Thus FWD cars were on the menu. Picture someone looking for a new car purchase in December of 2001, for something sporty my choices were basically this, a Celica, or an Eclipse. Hyundai at the time was still a name plate that most people avoided. So I purchased this car and used it for two years as as daily driver. I also had another unique Merc in the 94 Capri as a second fun car. I picked up a truck in 2004 and kept the two Mercs in the garage for safe keeping. At this point the Cougar is clocking about 500 miles annually with its trips to the Larz Anderson Museum Cars and Coffee events, and occasional jaunts to clear its throat. There are a few us loyalists that care greatly for these cars still as they are a great feeling and driving car, just not the greatest to work on with limited space under the hood of the V6 especially.
Ref. the word “eighth: Just need to break it down a bit for it to make sense, ie. “ei” identification of impending peril. “Ghth” is the sound made when peril meets momentum.
A friend of mine had one of these when we were in high school. Can’t remember what engine was in it, but it was a manual which was pretty cool. By the time I graduated high school in 2011 manuals were already pretty rare. I remember that to put it in reverse, there was a little round trigger (for lack of a better word) that you had to pull up on before it would engage. And then her sister took the Cougar off to college, leaving her with my least favorite car of all time: an early 2000s Ford Taurus. I’d have been furious. The Cougar was fun though, I didn’t get to drive it hard or very far but it was an engaging car to drive.
“…and is now in Mercury heaven, which is interestingly located in the orbit of Venus, not Mercury.”
lol, and Venus is pissed.
I like the fact that Mercury Monday is rarely on a Monday. It kind of fits this site and its ragtag group of finger infections.
I actually saw the Ford version running around Conakry (where I live) the other day. Needless to say, I was flabbergasted to see one intact here, still running and surprisingly not sending terminal amounts of smoke out of the tailpipe.
Did they end up selling the tooling to Hyundai for the second gen Tiburon? That was an ugly overrated POS that looked just like this. A friend of mine’s son bought that Tiburon as his fist new car purchase (no more shitboxes needing vise grips to move) based on glowing reviews. Not long after he told me that he thought he was getting a cool sporty car, but he had rented an Accord on a trip and realized how much sportier a rental spec Accord was to his ‘cool GT’. Hype be hype…
LOL I still have mine. It’s not pretty and has almost 250K on it. I’m keeping it until it dies or falls apart.
My brother in law destroyed his in a winter car accident. Happiest day of his life. He took the insurance payout and RAN.
I always thought these looked like they were putting their butt up in the air.
Also was a known chic car when I was in high school, next to the Sunfire convertable.
Not a fan, mostly because it replaced the last perfect Cougar.
Perfect is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
I had a Contour of that era, it was one of my favorite cars ever, for the first 130k miles.
For that first 130k miles, it was rock solid reliable, lots of fun to drive because it handled excellent, and had just about enough power to invite hooliganism. Very good on gas, too.
Once it rolled over 100k, the engine mounts failed, the AC self-destructed, and a little later, all the major suspension parts, front and rear, went bad at once. It was only about 7 years old then, and the rocker panels were nothing but paint over a rust outline. It would’ve been worth $1500 or so fixed up, and the repairs would’ve been about $2000.
The engine and transmission were still as new when it rolled onto the flat bed hauler that took it away.
Since then I’ve been extremely hesitant to even consider anything made by Ford because of this, family members problems with six(!) early life cycle rebuilds of Ford V6 engines, a neighbor’s constant battle with rust on their Aerostars and Windstars, and troubles with shock tower and engine cradle mount rust on Ford Escapes.
The 8th Gen Cougar was subject to all the same failures and weaknesses as the Contour. No wonder there are so few around. That’s a little sad because they were very pretty.
My brother had one of these. It was a decent car and reasonably fun to drive, but I mostly remember how torturous the back seats were. A normal size person like myself (6’2″, 275 lb.) should not attempt to ride in the back seat of a ’99 Cougar. The rear seats are incredibly narrow, there is no legroom, and you have to lean sharply to one side to keep your head from hitting the rear window (which doubles as a headrest). I sat in the back of my brother’s car only once. It was during his test drive, which was problematic as he had never previously driven a vehicle with a manual transmission. I quickly learned to dread stop signs and read lights, as the car jerked violently every time he started from a complete stop, repeatedly propelling my head into the rear window. I must have whacked my head about 30 times (my memory is a bit hazy since this was over 20 years ago and I got a few concussions during that test drive). I have no idea how my skull didn’t break the glass. Fortunately, my brother quickly learned how to drive a manual transmission smoothly, but after that experience, I never sat in the back seat of his car again.
It’s a ugly pile of shit. Both 4 and 6 cylinder motors riddled with nothing but problems.
My remembrance was that it was Interesting, but not a “Cougar”,….front wheel drive hatchback =/= cougar
It really needed a Ford badge like it got in Mexico. Nothing about it says Mercury, in any way.
I had a 2000 V6 with five speed in spruce green color it had the v6 sport package which was spoiler and 16″ wheels. There was also some luxury package which was leather and whatever else. No sunroof which was probably a lot better. The 99 and 2000 was slightly different and prettier than the 01 in most of your pictures.The spruce green color was fantastic and not applied to many other Ford product ever. It was very nice to drive, smooth power and good handling it had ABS and all speed traction control which was rare at that time. Lots of cargo space for a sporty car, was a hatchback. Mine just barely tapped a pole at low speed and the airbags went off. The big reason you never see these around any more is the passenger airbag was half the dashboard and cost thousands to replace? The car was totaled with no broken headlights, and no broken windshield. It was two years old at the time and low mileage. If it would have been a corolla with dog dish hubcaps and an AM radio, it would have been fixed. The other reason they are all gone today is somewhere before 2005, they ended up being the favorite car to buy for your high school age daughter. I used to see at least one wrecked in the local news every week for a year or two.
Got 2001 V6 manual as a company car, same green color as yours, and with moon roof. My dream car back then. Liked the color! My sister complained about back seat, don’t know why.
Mercury LN7 when?
A face only a mother could love.
Angry frog for the win.
Now that you mention it, I imagine the New Edge Cougar will forever be the “We have Audi TT at home” to me.
There’s actually one parked a couple streets down from me, I’m assuming a senior who bought it new and doesn’t drive it enough for it to wear out. I like them, although I’m assuming it didn’t help that it was a relatively sporty car that was also more overtly feminine.
I agree with the overall sentiment about Ford’s New Edge styling aging well compared to the other domestic manufacturers of the same era. I always thought the Cougar looked great, but it was a big miss for Ford not to upgrade the 2.5l to Contour SVT 195/200HP spec power levels to better compete in the fading sporty coupe market.
Look at an Australian made Ford AU Falcon for the worst of new edge design. Especially the base model, the Forte…..it’s not good.
Was the AU supposed to be “new edge” or just a derivative mashup of the Taurus? Ka, Focus, Puma, and Cougar are the best examples of New Edge still holding freshness in their designs, but Ford didn’t do a good job of applying this to larger platforms. I’ll agree that the AU falcon is definitely an ugly duckling
Yep, definitely a clean sheet “new edge” design sadly. Great car, unkillable engine/box/diff that easily did half a million kilometres in taxis with barely an oil change, but looked all droopy and sad.
All those in favor of just renaming this segment “Mercury Moment”, please raise your hand.
Na. Mercury Monday on whatever day is so much more Torch. If he was logical and rational, I wouldn’t be here
Agree with this. The incongruity of the day adds just the right amount of spice.
Keep it up.
Mercury had some really cool cars.
Who ever heard of a sedan with a roll down rear window…
I thought the V-6 Contour with a 5 speed was a pretty good driving car and pretty zippy for the late 90s, but the ones I was looking at just a few years old seemed to have issues, things falling off and not working. I ended up getting a Maxima SE manual and I think I made the right choice, but the Contour was fun. I even test drove an SVT once, but it seemed to have been rode hard and put away wet.
Anyway, the Mercury based on the Contour underpinnings probably would have been ok to. I actually had a Mercury Villager at the time they were coming out. Talked to the salesperson about wouldn’t that be great, they didn’t seem too excited or interested, so maybe they read the market better than me, or maybe was just a typical car salesman that doesn’t give a crap about cars. The article is right, you don’t see too many of them anymore, you really don’t see Contours either.
One of the current members of Boston Brass had this when I was in college and he was oddly proud of it. Always made me think of the contemporary Tiburon.
1968 Mercury Cougar: Groovy driving comfort
“Driving comfort is so groovy, owners might want to move 15 or 20 miles farther from work just for the pleasure of the ride back and forth each day. Would you believe five?” – Motor Trend magazine
They just don’t write ‘em up like that anymore, thank goodness. Or do they Torch?