Picked these up a while back. Seller claimed they were from an estate, but otherwise had no info.
The only somewhat unusual thing about the majority is that the typical white embroidery is silver instead. But the one with the pin backs is a type I’ve not seen before. And of course the “GS” is a mystery. If anyone knows anything about these, or even cares to offer informed speculation, I’d appreciate any information.
“Gurney Special”?
Those are really neat - similar to the one I have on a jacket, but different.
The patch I have has a white border like you mentioned, the “Cougar” is in the Goudy Heavy Italic font like Mercury used in '67/68 and the running cat is different.
I’m not an expert, but they look like Chinese knock offs. They’ve been flooding eBay with that kind of stuff for years.
I’m not sure that even the patches that were sold originally through magazine ads in the '60s and '70 were a legitimate Lincoln-Mercury offering.
Strictly policing your licensing and usage was a relatively new concept in those days - I don’t think the manufacturers were hip yet to how important that sort of thing was yet.
None of those wonderful Ed Roth/Rat Fink/Monster/Hot Rod t-shirts advertised in Hot Rod, Car Craft, etc. were officially licensed products.
Like Phillip said, here is the one on the jacket that came with the Waco Eliminator. White stiching and I don’t know what font it is.
Look at the ones on eBay and then compare the font to the ones on Dave’s jacket. The ones on eBay are recent kinda sorta look - alikes. And the sellers always use some sort of language like “thought to be from the 1960’s” as a way to weasel out of the fact that they were made in some child labor sweat shop last month.
Here is mine that came on a jacket that I got in a trade I made in the '80s with a noted Shelby memorabilia collector.
Seems to be at least two distinctive styles.
I have several vintage car magazines with ads for these (and other) patches. When I have some time I’ll dig one of those out, scan it and share it here.
Your correct Phillip. Even to me an obvious difference is mine is all upper case, but based on the “C” is the font the same?
zipper pull from the jacket that I have.
Interesting - The Great Lakes Jacket was a sponsor of Fast Eddie Schartman’s Boss 429 Cougar.
I recreated the logo (along with all of the decals) for Mike Derose’s tribute.
Could be, but I don’t think so. It doesn’t really come across in pictures, and it’s hard to describe, but in person there’s a sense these have some age about them. They may have originated in an asian sweatshop, but if so it was well before ebay IMO.
Anyway, I don’t know if we’re any closer to an answer, but there’s been a bunch of interesting stuff posted regardless!
Pure speculation on my part but the GS on the one might be a monogram. I also seem to recall that things like this were listed in the JC Whitney catalogs too.
Randy Goodling
CCOA #95
