In the National Registry there are approximately 131 buck tags submitted. According to Phil Parcels, this is a first. DK Blue is called out. We thought that is was for the vinyl top color. The Marti Report came back with Black Vinyl Top. Anyone else find anything like this?
Post the Marti report. I take it nothing that is Dark Blue. Maybe lower dash color to match the interior? Just guessing…
That is very odd. BLUE didn’t come into use until 1970. Do you have the Marti Report?
It has a dark blue interior, I have seen both black and dark blue seat belts used in 68 on that interior but why would that be called out on the Buck? Mostly items needing a hole punched were called out on the buck tag.
Let it also be known that the vinyl top that’s on this car now is indeed dark blue, and it does have the original stainless retainer strips in the drip rail channel that are usually an indicator of an original top. Also the trim pieces around the bottom are painted dark blue to match. It looks pretty legit, but hard to say for sure. The mystery is whether someone did this, or whether the factory actually installed a dark blue top, which wasn’t supposed to be an option.
Crawl inside the trunk and see if the nuts that hold on the vinyl top trim have ever been removed. If not that would tell you it’s factory and most likely the call out on the buck tag. I would think that VT would be in front of dark blue. Maybe the Dark Blue just replaces the VT spot for the vinyl roof.
Brian, I will check that against my other tags.
It is an obvious replacement on the top, spray painted top trim and aftermarket blue top. The DK blue refers to something else, just puzzling what it could be…
Have you looked for the build sheet yet? May shed some light.
Sorted my Dearborn 1968 buck tags. From my sampling of 31 tags, 3 are PARCH, 10 are BLACK, and the other 18 are non vinyl top cars. All vinyl roof color call outs, are at the end of the second row of script. Looking closely at the type style of the numbers / letters, the 8, 9, 5, 6, 3, and B are slightly different than the tags in my possession.
“VR” was used in 1967 in front of the vinyl roof color.
The only reason I would think a call out on color is needed early in the build on the buck tag is for the VR. The other call outs are to prepare the body for the options that are getting added later in assembly. So, on the Marti it says “Black vinyl roof” but I see no call out on the buck tag for VR black? Maybe originally it did have a dark blue vinyl top from the factory to match the dark blue interior? The top could have went bad and the owner replaced it with another aftermarket blue vinyl top to try and match the original. Diamond blue paint with dark blue leather interior and dark blue top would make for a nice color combo on a Cougar. I could see the factory doing that combination.
This is the car formerly owned by Ray Bodensteiner right? He dyed the original black vinyl top blue while restoring it. It was an amazing original car, it probably should not have been restored. The Dark Blue I think refers to the carpet color.
When we have sen vehicles that appear to have “unavailable” parts on them, the parts at least exist in some form in the plant. For example there are Cougars that got Mustang steering wheels, and visa versa. The point here is that there were no blue vinyl tops that fit the Cougar being made for production until 1970. I think that Royce has this one, but I don’t know why the buck tag would indicate that. It also could have been simple human error, someone typed blue instead of black…
That answers that! Thanks for clarifying, can’t beat firsthand accounts.
In my 1968 Cougar sales catalog the only two colors available for optional vinyl tops were black and ivory. So this thread reminded me of my Marti report and it clearly states “Parchment vinyl top”. Also I have a standard parchment interior but my steering wheel is wood grained which should not have been. Granted it is possible it was changed out later but I seriously doubt that as my turn signal switch just broke. From the appearance under the pad and the difficulty in removing it, I don’t think it has ever been off before. So it was either a mistake or intentionally done to keep the line moving as Bill stated.
We just parted out a very original 1969 351w Cougar With an “N” case differential. It had a 2.75 ratio gear set and 28 spline axles. Supposedly the Nodular heavy duty case was only available on performance 31 spline rears. Businesses do this all the time, if we are out of an economy part we often substitute the premium part at no extra charge to the customer just to keep the orders flowing out the door on time.
True enough but not analgous to the vinyl top scenario. There were no 1967 - 68 Cougar vinyl tops sitting around in blue to be used up on the line.
Agreed, I was referring to the above statement " Also I have a standard parchment interior but my steering wheel is wood grained which should not have been."