This story begins, for me at least, in 1994 when I met a girl who would later become (and still is) my wife. She drove an old Toyota Tercel that was a bit beat up. Behind her house, however, sat a light ivy yellow 1970 Mercury Cougar with a green vinyl top. She was, and still is, the second owner and it was her first car. She drove it from northern California to Florida in the late 80’s. She told me it had been sitting there for a few years and she would love to get it running one day. She loved the car and happily named it “John Cougar” after one of her then favorite singers, eh, you guessed it, John Cougar.
I knew a little about cars mostly by helping friends, who were much more knowledgeable than I, work on their cars. I even helped a few engine rebuilds. Having at least some basic knowledge, I decided to try and get it running. Turns out all it needed to at least turn over and drive was a tune up. We drove it sparingly for a year or two using it only when our daily drivers where down and out for one reason or another. It had AC but it didn’t work and the heater would blow pieces of dirt in your face every now and then. Eventually we moved and after driving the car to the new house it sat outside for at least a year or so and never moved. Enter the neighbor.
I became good friends with my neighbor who is a great mechanic and built many a race car. He is a Ford enthusiast and always had a Mustang or two in his yard that he was working on. He learned of my car and offered to help fix it up. I had little money so everything was done on a tight budget. We moved it into the garage, lifted it up on jack stands, and began taking it apart. We focused mostly on the engine, suspension, fuel system, and breaks. The engine ran quite well despite not having anything significant done to it. I built a home made sand blasting box using wood, carpet, plexiglass, and a cheep sand blasting gun. I pulled just about the entire front grill area apart and sand blasted every part and painted it using spray cans. My friend rebuilt the carburetor and I remember being amazed at how he could take it completely apart and rebuild it without looking at a picture or any reference material. He had obviously done this before.
Over the course of two years, we worked on it in our spare time which was minimal and replaced the fuel tank and fuel lines, breaks (everything from master cylinder down), removed the stock exhaust manifold and put headers, and did a lot of small things including sanding and painting everything we could. The engine ran and sounded pretty damn awesome with the open headers. Then my friend moved away for various reasons unimportant to the story and I was left on my own to continue working on the car. I also had two small children that took more of my time so the Cougar became an afterthought. It sat, in the garage, on jack stands for another 7 years until we decided to move ourselves.
My good friend and I remained in touch off and on and he had offered to take the car, temporally while I was getting my house ready for sale. He also wanted to work on some things that he never got a chance to do when he was my neighbor. I happily accepted and got John all ready for transport. It needed some reassembly and with it being 7 years it took me some time figuring out where everything went. We loaded it on a flat bed trailer that I borrowed from another neighbor and friend and head out to GA where my friend had lived. The car had not been started in years so we pushed it onto the trailer using man power. Arrhh! Once we got to my friends house in GA we unloaded it, pushed it into his garage (he had a whole workshop with a lift now) and got to work. After a little bit of fiddling, it started right up with a loud roar! Man it sounded nice! We stayed for the night visiting our friends and left the next morning. About 4 months later we moved to TN. I actually waved out the window and honked the horn as we passed the exit to my friends house en route to our new home some 250 miles north west of my wife’s first car and our friends house.
My friend fell into some really bad times and never really got time to work on the car. It sat in his yard, in the elements for 8 years just rotting away more and more. He did some work on it but nothing that he really wanted to. I could have picked it up any time after I moved but at first I didn’t have time to deal with it and then I wasn’t sure where I could put it. The years went by and it was out of site and out of mind. Last week, my friend called me up and said he had sold his house and needed me to come get the car. He was real apologetic about not getting any work done to the car and I told him not to worry about it and that I was appreciative he was just able to store it all these years. Yesterday, my son (now 17) and I hitched up our trailer and headed to GA to get the car.
When we got there the car was in bad shape but actually better than what I expected. The interior is pretty much destroyed but the body looks good. We pulled it up on the trailer using a come-along, tied it down and drove it home. It was the first time my wife, the owner of the car, seen it since we dropped it off 8 years ago. She is so happy to see it even though it’s in rough shape. Now I need to figure out how to restore it. She really wants to have a professional restore it but we don’t have the money for that. I will probably do it mostly myself along with my son and make it a father/son project. I’m very handy and love to build things but admittedly I do not know how to do this myself. I can’t weld, I don’t know how to rebuild an engine and I have never taken on a car project this big on my own. I know more than I did back then and have done break jobs and other minor repairs to my cars. I have an ATV that I do all the repairs on and believe me, it needs a lot of repairs after I take it into the trails to play. The Internet will be my friend which is how/why I found this forum.
So long for now and thanks for reading my story. I will be posting on this board often as I seek advice on this project. First order of business is to clean out a space in one of my garages to do this work. Right now, it’s sitting under my car part which ironically is the same cover it had when I first saw this car nearly 24 years ago.
- Mark (he who has a lot to learn but willing and able…)
Some pics…
