The February 2018 Ride of the Month is Charlie Brown’s '67 XR-7!
Charlie’s Story and the Mysterious Origin of Number 650241
Page 1: Charlie’s Cougar
You know how the story begins: Charlie Brown’s first car was a '68 Cougar XR-7, it was Black Cherry with a white vinyl top. He always regretted letting that one go. Haven’t we all been there?
Fifteen years would pass before he would find another Cougar to take it’s place. Fortunately his wife Paula was supportive, but the years had made finding any Cougar difficult, much less an XR-7 in decent shape. Finally, on January 1st of 2002 he found his car.
You don’t expect to see much in the used car classifieds on New Years day. Charlie was relaxing reading the paper, the Rose Bowl parade on the TV in the background, when he decided to check out he classifieds anyway. There she was, a 1967 Cougar XR-7 on a local dealer lot. A call to the lot confirmed they were open. A change of clothes and Charlie was out the door to check out the Cougar.
Charlie describes what he saw this way: “She had 97K miles and showed it. She had a big dent in the driver side where the previous owner, an older lady, had decided to take her for a drive and hit a telephone pole when the brakes locked up. The interior was all there and not bad; the bones were good. She had no rust except for a rear quarter; the rest was very clean.”
After he got the Cougar home the process of bring the Cougar back to life began. “It took about a month to figure out what I wanted to do. She needed some new tires, so I went and put on American Racing Salt Flats and BFGoodrich radial TA’s on. I wanted something different. Now, I had to decide on my next steps. I wanted one like I had in high school, but I am purist and had to leave it Cinnamon Frost. My brother Joel and I spent the better part of a week pulling the interior out, pulling all the chrome, and prepping it for body work. My brother was a fantastic body guy and between him and James Shiew, another good friend, they did all the body work and paint. The color is Cinnamon Frost and yes, some people just call it brown or copper, but it IS Cinnamon Frost.”
While the Cougar was at his brothers place, Charlie had the motor, transmission and differential rebuilt. When the car returned to his shop in the fall of 2002 he rebuilt or replaced all of the suspension components front and rear. Finally, they were able to put the drive line back in. “She sounded great the first time she fired up. She then went to Tulsa Auto Trim to have a new vinyl top and headliner installed. Then the fun part of putting the interior back started. All new dash pad, carpet and kick panels. It all went pretty well and the fall of 2002 she was rolled out of the garage ready to go.”
Once the Cougar was back in prime shape Charlie started attending a few shows. “The first car show I took her to was in Spring of 2003 and I took 2nd in the Classic Muscle Class. She has won several other awards since 2003, but I don’t really attend to win a trophy.” Charlie’s biggest reward from attending shows is getting to meet other enthusiasts. “I had a chance meeting with several members of Mid America Classic Cougars that had just started up. They had the same love for the Cougar as I did, so we all clicked. We attend shows together, but we want to talk to people about their cars and what they have in their garage and barns. One of the most memorable was last year at the Daryl Starbird show here in Tulsa. Randy Christian and I had the chance to put both of our Cougars in that show. We spent 3 days talking to hundreds of people and handing out MACC and CCOA forms and trying to gain new members. We still hear the proverbial; “What is that.” MACC is up to 57 members now.”
If you have read this far you know that Charlie’s story is not too far removed from many of our own. And on the surface, Charlie’s Cougar is a nice well optioned car but not incredibly rare in the 1 of 1 department. To understand the significance of Charlies Cougar you have to know The Rest of the Story.
The Mysterious Origin of 650241
Charlie’s Cougar was built in the Dearborn Michigan plant as were all 1967 Cougars. It was ordered through the Dallas District Sales Office by Fred Jones Lincoln Mercury for its Tulsa Oklahoma dealership. All of that is ordinary enough.
The full VIN number is 7F93C650241. That decodes to 1967 Cougar XR-7 with the C code 289 2V engine, the sequence number was 650241. At first that may seem unremarkable except for one thing. The sequence number of Mercury vehicles should start with 500000 . The higher number means that over 100,000 Mercury vehicles had been scheduled by the time this Cougar was built. In fact, this was a very late production '67 Cougar. The highest production number was 651900. Vehicles are not built according to the sequence number, but if they were Charlie’s Cougar and the last Cougar were less than one days production apart.
The Rest of the Story
On September 6th, 1967 the UAW called for a company wide strike. It would continue for 66 days, until they reached an agreement October 22nd finally ratified by the local bargaining units on November 11th, becoming the longest strike in Ford history. On September 15th an article in the Ford Times described the strike.
“An eerie—and costly silence continued this week at the Ford Plants across the country. On assembly lines sit new '68 models unfinished and untouched since 159,800 hourly employees represented by the United Auto Workers walked off their jobs at 11:59PM Sept 6.”
At most Assembly Plants a skeleton crew was maintained by agreement to keep certain operations at a minimum as to not damage systems such as heating, electricity and at the Glass Plant. A seven man crew maintained the furnace where molten glass was stored. Shutting down the Coke Oven took a week slowly dropping the heat until the ovens were sufficiently cooled as not to cause damage. At the The Rouge plant 300 workers a day maintained the operations compared to the normal 32,461 Workers.
Dealers were desperate for cars by the time the strike was over. It had occurred during the critical new car introduction and many lots were completely bare.
Yet, in the middle of this strike, some how Fred Jones Lincoln-Mercury was delivered a brand new 1967 Cougar. Charlie’s Cougar was ordered before the strike began, the order received by Ford on June 6th. The sequence number was also assigned before the strike on July 19th. The buck date is missing, but it must have been before the strike began. What we next know is that the scheduled build date was August 7th , and the actual build date was August 10th and the car was released to transport the next day. All this time the factory should have been dark, completely shut down minus the UAW workforce. And we know the date to be correct because the new owner had the car in service on August 28th.
How did that happen? To begin with Fred Jones Lincoln Mercury was not your average dealership. Fred Jones had started his automotive career working in the new Ford Assembly plant in Oklahoma City in 1916. He rapidly moved up the ladder but decided that he preferred sales and opened his first dealership in Oklahoma City in 1922. By 1926 he had built the largest Ford dealership in the southwest. By 1955 he was the nation’s number one seller of Ford cars and trucks. Not in New York. Not in California, but in tiny Oklahoma.
If that were not enough he also started Fred Jones Manufacturing where they re-manufactured parts for cars and trucks. The facility grew so large it was commonly called the little Rouge River plant. In 1968 he acquired the old Ford assembly plant where he started in 1916,and converted it into his new factory. He was serving 2500 dealers through a distribution network that spanned the US. It is fair to say that Fred Jones was very well connected within the Ford organization. If Fred Jones wanted cars, chances were he would get them.
We have to speculate about the details but here is what makes sense. Typically a car ordered for stock was built within a few weeks of the date it was serialized. Because the order type was Stock, it would be lower priority than a Retail order so it could be bumped for later production if higher priority orders arrived. As the strike deadline loomed, dealers would begin to clamor for cars, and a well connected dealer like Fred Jones would be heard loud and clear.
The buck date is missing but the Cougar must have been bucked and run through most of the assembly process before the strike. After the strike began some white collar non union members of management and engineering could enter the plants to see if there were any cars that could be completed and shipped. These cars would have had to be substantially completed, perhaps needing only final inspection and adjustments before leaving the plant.
So Charlie’s Cougar was produced by a factory that for all intents and purposes was closed. The research goes on!
