Are you in a position of buying back this car if the owner is willing to sell? I can see you taking a 2nd honeymoon in the car…
Amen brother. You need to come party w/us in Scottsdale this January. See the thread linked below.
PM me to set it up.
Regards,
No, I am not interested in owning it again now. The current owner is the right person to own this car now and to bring it back to be the car it once was. I’m just looking forward to seeing the finished car maybe one day or at least photos of the completed car.
I for one think it’s really cool that an original owner of a GT-E is actively involved and providing history and photos 
The current owner is very lucky!
- Phillip
This photo I posted of my new bride and the back of my Cougar was taken on July 2, 1969. We were living in a nice apartment on Johnson Ferry Rd in Atlanta. We had just gotten married and were leaving to drive to the old Marriott Hotel in downtown Atlanta for a two night honeymoon. My friends had written stuff all over my Cougar with white shoe polish. I was not that happy about that. Even though we didn’t get to bed until about 2 am and didn’t get to sleep until about 4 am (well I was 24 and my beautiful bride was 21) I got up at about 7 am to go out and find a car wash to get that damn white shoe polish off my Cougar.
I can relate! I have only been married about 5 yrs but had a similar fear of people writing on my vehicles. At the time it was a 2011 Ford Raptor. I threatened the life of anyone that dared touch it with any type celebration decoration! It must have worked they left my vehicles alone! 
This is a cool story and thanks for sharing. I often wonder what its like to look back on some of our vehicle decisions we make down the road and if I will regret selling a vehicle Ive owned in the past. Im sure some can only wonder why you would get rid of such a cool car and not hold on to it but as with anything that time in your life dictates decisions to be made. I sometimes envy those that can hold on to a vehicle for multiple decades or hand it down through the generations.
I traded my Cougar because it didn’t have A/C and driving to work in downtown Atlanta in the summer without air is really rough. Yea if I knew then what I know now I still would have been out of luck because I didn’t have the money to store the Cougar and have another daily driver. I traded it in 1970. A couple of years later in 1972 with gas prices going from 25 cents a gallon to $1.50 a gallon you couldn’t get anything for a 427, 428CJ, Hemi because of the fear that gas wasn’t going to be available. I passed on a 1968 Shelby GT500KR before I bought this rare Cougar because I didn’t like the white interior. Selling price for the Shelby $4,000. My first car was a 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air Convertible which I traded in on a new 1966 GTO Convertible. They gave me $500 for the 57 Chevy. What would you think all three of these cars would be worth today in excellent condition? Are there cars being sold today that will be worth a lot of money 50 years from today?? My Cougar’s selling price was about $4,500 but I was only making about $700 a month back in 1968. So that was about 3 to 4 years salary.
I’m one of the lucky ones that had a GT-E handed down. It helped immensely that the car was pretty famous in this area. My dad used to street race and the GT-E was the fastest car in Central New York by far. He made a lot of money drag racing all the Chebby’s and Mopars that thought they were all that. At that time fast cars were the coolest thing and being 10 years old and having all your buddies at school drooling over the car was the equivalent of being a rock star. There’s still guys around here that tell stories about it. After it broke a sodium exhaust valve in '75 it got parked. I spent my entire childhood begging him not to sell the car and rebuild it. He listened part way, and despite a couple guys that were desperate to buy it, it was not for sale. The rest never took hold until 2010 when we finally disassembled the 427 and sent the block out for machine work. Then he passed in Jan 2011 with nothing further done. I’ve only recently convinced myself that I need to get the car restored the way it deserves to be. With the help of Royce Peterson, Jim Pinkerton and a couple others, I’m finally gathering components and getting the engine back together.
The only “regret” I guess I have is no matter how much blood, sweat and money I put into it, it’s always going to be dad’s car not mine. But the best part is, it’s always going to be dad’s car.
Al Bundy, I know your dad would be proud. Yours is an even cooler story it that you still have the car. Funny, I was working for Pan Am in 1974 and was transferred to Syracuse, NY where I was the Area Sales Manager for Central Upstate New York. I’m from Tennessee and my wife Alabama so this was the first time we have lived in the Northeast. We spent one Winter with 110 inches of snow and moved back to Atlanta. It was a beautiful place in the Spring, Summer and Fall but those Winters were tough to take.
I hope you get your 427 back together soon. Looking forward to seeing some photos. However, I see you have some other great cars as well. What is a “W” code prototype 1968 GT-E???
Al Bundy, I wanted to also say that I am very sorry about the passing of your dad. After reading my posts I guess I sound like a pussy with the weather (too hot in Atlanta without air) too cold with the snow in Syracuse. But that’s the way you make decisions. We lived in an apartment in Liverpool, NY and loved the people and the Finger Lakes region. We even bought a boat in Syracuse but never got to use it before we moved back to Atlanta.
My dad’s last car was a 1958 Mercury four door. I would have loved to have kept that car as he passed in 1967 (he was 55 when I was born). His 1958 Mercury had a back seat the size of a sofa and all my friends wanted to double date and use that back seat. Those were the days.
Wow, small world. I don’t really blame you one bit for moving outta here. We’re still the snowiest city in the country. The older I get, the harder it is to take.
Thanks for the kind sentiment. Still miss him every day.
W is the engine code for the 427. I guess prototype would be more accurately described as “Pre-Production sales unit”. It’s one of the 12 cars that was produced to hit the show circuit before sales actually began.