Hi new to forum. I’m restoring for a customer a 69 cougar 428 CJ XR7 moon roof special paint car. Question is we know the car was pulled from the line for the special paint but was the car together and sent to a body shop and painted. It was painted true candy apple red.
If it has a 6-character DSO on the door tag, it would have been painted on the line just like a regular paint car, not pulled off to be done by itself. Ford offered about 250 non-standard “special” paint colors in this period.
So this car has 6 digit DSO. So if what your say is true this car was sent to American Sun Roof and had the moon roof and vinyl top installed and sent back to factory and painted Candy Apple Red. There was no colour under the vinyl top. The top was put on before the car was painted. I have done 69 Cougars painted from factory with vinyl tops and there is paint under the vinyl and inside the car. There is no paint around the back glass area inside or on the roof rails under the weather strips just the slop grey sealer.
Well, I think your reproduction window sticker sums it up nicely on that line near the bottom…
010_E_001 H Ford
Car was built as an Executive Vehicle for H Ford… whoever that might be >.>
I would think that the actual Factory Invoice might show more information. And you might query Kevin Marti to do some research for more details about that “Paint or Tire Order # 9056”. Considering the order details (Prime N C and Executive Vehicle for H Ford) it is very likely that this car would have been handled differently than the typical “special order” vehicle. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that your client has a pretty special car.
You might consider contacting DrCougar / John Benoit, who restored Cougar 1 (as well as the owner of Cougar 1, Jim Pinkerton). They might have some good insights on how these special “one off” cars were handled by the factory.
Looks like Cardinal Red from 68. Same as candy apple red and know by many others names in the color books.
Would love to see some photos of the entire car.
Goes without saying this is a ver special Cougar.
- Phillip
Thanks for your input. The car years ago had all the paint stripped off do to lacquer cracking (yes lacquer). The only way that the colour was found was when the car was totally disassembled. The colour was under the quarter belt molding. To find that it was a true candy was quite a surprise. Even under the molding was all cracked. It has a gold base coat transparent red and clear coat. At that time (69) how many paint companies ( suppliers) made candy apple red. House of Kolors has been around a long time but was there more? Interesting to know who at the time would have painted the car it would of had to be completely assemble to do a candy job, did they paint under hood, trunk and trunk floor? There was evidence that the interior back seat area at least was removed there was some colour/overspray when the door jams were sprayed. Did they cover the bottom of car or get overspray on it? There is a lot of questions that probably can’t be answered so it’s going to be difficult to do a really true restoration on this car.
This is probably not the same car (likely the Boss 429 Cougar prototype car), but the topic reminded me of a picture of (iirc) Fran Hernandez painting a '69 Cougar at Kar Kraft. Must be a vinyl top car, the way they have it wrapped up like that.
It would make sense that Ford would have sent this car to their specialty Kar Kraft shop to have it painted. It was a Detroit built car. Thanks for that photo it sheds some light on how it would have been masked off for paint.
During 1969 - 73 Ford / Mercury had the tooling to install sunroofs at the factory in Dearborn so it would not have gone to ASC for the sunroof, as the sunroof was at that time a factory option. A very rare one! There were a number of 1969 Eliminators with the factory sunroof as part of an order from Hertz Corporation that year, those cars were also done at Dearborn.
There is only one character for order type in the computer card, so there is no way to know if, for example, the car was also a “factory show unit” too. It would be easy to tell if you can provide a photo of the door jamb area.
Henry Ford II had at least one 1969 Cougar, formerly owned by Dick Hertzler. HFII had all his cars painted “Pomegranate Metallic” a sort of bright metallic red color. If this car was done for him it would have been that color.
Royce,
I have to disagree with you.
The 1969 Hertz Eliminators that I have copies of the invoices for show a “Ship to” of American Sun Roof, 18640 Walnut St, Southgate, MI.
The 1970 Hertz Eliminators also show the “Ship to” of American Sun Roof.
Is this possibly because the required line time was too much for the short period that the Hertz cars were required to be built in or because they did not receive a vinyl top, so they were handled differently than the other units with a sunroof in 1969 or 1970?
It would be interesting to see the invoices for 9F93Q932366 to see if a ship to of ASC was utilized.
Just read the history of ASC and they were still producing sunroof in the 73 Lincoln for Ford. For this same customer I did a 1969 Cougar that was built in San Jose with sun roof and it was a very poorly installed roof and by no way it was a factory job. The sunroof was in crooked off by 2" at rear and. 3/4" off to to pass. side and the brackets were just 1 1/4"X1/8" plate bent random to fit roof rails. The roof on this car which was done in Detroit was a far nicer job. Other then the brackets on both roofs the frame,tub and sunroof insert were the same.
On this car the sunroof was put in after the grey sealer/primer. You could see the jig marks that clamp to roof to bend the lip around for the sunroof. All edges were rusted where the primer cracked when they bent the lip and rust from where the jig cut into the roof skin.
That could be because the Eliminators were equipped with a sunroof AND had no vinyl top to hide the fact that sunroofs were punched into finished cars coming off the line. So someone had to at least repaint the tops of all those Eliminators. I should have thought of that.
I will also disagree. My non-Eliminator standard sunroof car with vinyl roof was shipped to ASC to have the sunroof installed. See my Eminger report.
Well I have to go with documentation over my old stories any day Jeff! It looks to me that Cougars were going to ASC in '69. Documentation always trumps anything else.
I think it’s clear that sunroof cars were shipped to ASC throughout the 1969 model year and at least the early part of the 1970 model year. I’d be curious to see a later build invoice for a sunroof car to see if/when the switch was made to factory installation sometime in 1970 or if that didn’t happen until 1971 or even later.
I’m always learning something new. That’s what I love about this site. Thank you to everyone for continually sharing what you know!
…and yes I think we’d all love to see pictures of that unique Cougar, F-350Loui !
The customer has owned this car for quite some time. I think he said he bought at a flee market in the US. It wasn’t much to look at the motor and trans were gone. He was told motor went to a Mustang. I don’t have any before pictures car came to me completely stripped. I will see if he has some old photos that I can scan. The car know is just bare metal.
