Hey everyone, I have a 69 Cougar I drove on nice weather days years ago. Here’s the door tag, there’s a thin metal tag thats painted over, fastened to the radiator support with a screw. The paint/bondo started bubbling up and I parked it in my garage, started exploring and found what I already knew…I’m in Michigan btw… rust everywhere and bondo. I pulled the 351w 2bbl, FMX. removed the hood and fenders, stipped some paint, and its sat on jack stands and car ramps in my garage. So I’v entertained the idea that " someday I would fix it up". Reality has caught up w me, its not gonna happen. I’v got a little mig setup and hobby level fab experience
& decent tools, what I don’t have is free time. SO, should I offer for sale as a rolling body or should I part it out? The rust is :rear quarters, trunk floor, trunk extensions, front floors both sides, torque boxes, rear frame rails, rear leaf mounts, front clip is good, glass is good. I bought front disc spindles on ebay along the way, heads and intake are off the block. This needs to be put on a rotisserie, I wish I could do it. Any ideas? what should I do ? what would you do? is it worth someone restoring it? anyone in Michigan interested in looking at it? I’m going to sell it I just don’t know how to approach it. comments welcome
“thank you for your support”… Orville
See if anyone is interested as is. If not, part it out.
There’s a guy in this forum looking for a roof for a vinyl top car…would be shame to part out any Cougar, but if one saves another…
John’s Classic Cougars, in Holland Mi, may be interested.I think he buys complete cars.
thanks
Get some tires on it so it is a “roller” and advertise it that way. If someone can push or winch it on a trailer easily you should have more interest. The problem with a part out is that you end up with a shell and other items that might not sell easily. You might not get as much selling as a “roller” but it is gone and you don’t have the mess pulling it apart.
Hello Orville. I sent a P-M to you. Thanks.
Thanks for sharing. Definitely a parts car at this point. The most valuable parts I can see are the dash pad (if not cracked) and the door panels if they don’t have any damage outside of those incorrect speaker cutouts. Unfortunately, I don’t see a lot of options on the car outside of the decore interior and AC, so there’s not much to be made parting it out. I’ve bought nicer cars to part out in the $2k range recently. It’s a bit blasphemous around here, but you may find a Mustang guy who wants it for the drivetrain. That said I had a hard time recently selling a similar setup (351 2v, FMX, 9"), but you may find the right guy. Best of luck!
This hobby has room for everyone. Consider this. Some one that doesn’t have a ton of cash saved up can buy this for probably less than $3k. And they can do some work on it as the money and time becomes available. Not all Cougars should be perfect. Patch it you can as well as you can and move on. It’ll have bondo here and there and it won’t be “correct “ but going down the road no one cares.
My point is that there are lots of folks that might not have $10k today but they can find a few thousand here and there as time allows. If you part it it’s gone forever.
I’m in the Detroit metro area as well and should you decide to part this out I could be interested in a few things.
I don’t know - in my experience there’s nothing more expensive than a cheap classic car!
thanks for your comments and ideas its always good to consider what others say and at least listen. I’ve decided to hang on to it for now. I moved stuff out of the way and looked it over again, thought thru alot of diffrent scenarios in my head and here’s what I came up with; If I let this go now, I’ll never own another 69 anything, not likely. Not likely for me to ever buy a 50 some yr old car that someone has restored and not likely to find a deal on a 50 yr old car that needs restoration. So I’m going to keep the dream alive and continue to fool myself, I just need to make room for a rotisserie in my garage… eventually…one of these days. So I hope to get some good info and learn from other cougar people on here.
Glad you’ll stick around! I would keep soaking up the knowledge here. Keep an eye on FB marketplace, in my experience cars come up there for reasonable prices every so often. I would find a more solid car to start with and maybe part yours out after taking what you need. I bought a complete, loaded, near rust free ‘69 XR7 for $2k not long ago. They’re out there!