Here is an interesting shot scanned from one of my mags of a Cougar at All American Racers in 1967.
Dan lobbied hard to have Mercury offer a true high performance Cougar for the street and to use his Gurney-Eagle heads on the Trans-Am Cougars but it was not to be.
Ford didn’t want an intramural rival (as Peter Revson was told, it is not Chevrolet that the Ford people hate…it is Mercury). So they pulled Bud Moore’s TA Cougar funding for the '68 season - so late in fact that it left Dan, Parnelli and Ed Leslie without rides that year.
Robin Miller (AKA Rocket) thought about and built a modified G racer with a bunch of parts out of this catalog, including the Cougar scripted Weber system. Here’s a couple of pictures from a number of years ago.
Are there any group II specific magazines, or articles that are still available? I don’t recall anything from the Legendary Cougar series, or from the cougar club news letters. If there is something I can buy, I will take it to the Shelby museum over in Boulder. They just bought a second building, and are building a library. I’d like to do my part to donate some Cougar specific stuff.
There was an article and test drive of the proposed Mercury Cougar Group 2 in the January 1967 issue of Road & Track, plus the January 1967 issue of Motor Trend drove it and compared it to a loaded 390 powered Cougar. Both of those articles were compiled (along with other Cougar and Mercury articles from when the cars were new) in a book called “Mercury Muscle Cars 1966-1971” published by Brooklands Books. That came out in the '80s I think. I thumbed through my copy and it is worth noting that all of the engine photos of the Group 2 Cougar and of one of the Bud Moore TA Cougars show a oval “Cougar” aircleaner like the one that Vick posted earlier. That is no ribs below the Walking Cat emblem or around the edge.
There is a Car and Driver where Brock Yates (editor at the time) writes a column about picking Dan Gurney up and swapping cars with him. I think Brock had a '67 383 Barracuda that he gave to Dan. It is an enjoyable article but not too good if you are a Mercury fan.
I believe it is in mid - 1967 and it is clearly the Group II Cougar.
I was digging through my magazines and found this article. It is a section of a larger article written by Gene Bordinat who was Vice President of Design at Ford at that time. The article is called “Design Evolution of the Cougar” and appeared in the June 1967 issue of American Rodding magazine.
So I’ve seen and read a few of the Group II articles now- But I haven’t seen, or heard of any actual cars produced with that title. Are there any examples? Or would “GT” Cougar, be the best example? Or a performance optioned XR7?
A Group II Cougar was planned and at least the one prototype was produced that a couple of the magazines tested. However Mercury killed it at some point and I have heard that the prototype was sent to, I believe, Dearborn Steel and Tubing (I’d have to check my notes and I’m too lazy right now) and turned into the first 1967 Trans Am Cougar. So no production Group II Cougars but they got as far as producing some of the parts.
