***Both Flickr and Facebook require that a user have an account to view the photos:
FLICKR PHOTO GALLERY: Tim Sullivan | Flickr ***********************
FACEBOOK PHOTO GALLERY: https://www.facebook.com/TimothyJ225/media_set?set=a.10201865142856813.1073741825.1430432162&type=3
THIS IS A BORROWED PLACE ON MY FRIENDS WEBSITE, BUT NO REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED:
http://www.texassureplan.com/Tim-Sullivan--Cougar-Contest.html
*** Please note we are not trying to sell anything, we just needed a place to put photos so people who dont want to sign up for facebook or flickr can still view the photos.
Why I Should Save This 1967 MERCURY COUGAR GT From the Crusher
In life, there are times when you see an opportunity that you just know was meant for you…and looking back on how long it took to form, how many things had to happen in a certain way, and did, you know it is your destiny.
When I saw the advertisement for the 1967 MERCURY COUGAR GT Giveaway, I knew that perfect opportunity had just smacked me right in the face. The smack rendered no injury or offense, instead my heart beamed with excitement. You see, I am very confident that with the way God works in all of our lives, this is a gift and an opportunity that was meant just for me and for this GT. You will see the timing is beyond perfect and if I do not take the time to share my story then I am doing the 1967 MERCURY COUGAR GT an injustice. This car deserves to be loved and brought back to life one inch at a time and I am all ready for it. My mechanic and I have already been putting together the heart and soul for your car AND DID NOT EVEN REALIZE IT UNTIL NOW.
This story plays out like a box office smash hit, it has action, drama, and true love for the 1967 Mercury Cougar GT …
At age 16, after convincing my parents that having my own ride was a good idea and working hard to save a few grand, I was ready to buy a car…my first car. I searched newspapers and all over (internet not an available option in 1985) for a cool car that would be unique in its own way and that I would fall in love with.
One day my Dad came home and said, “Hey Kiddo, have you seen the old Cougar down at the Gulf Station for sale?” I had no idea what he was talking about and did not know even what the car looked like. He said, “It’s like a Mustang but fancier. I think you will like it, come on and we will go look at it.”
I never will forget the first time I saw a 1967 Cougar! I loved the design and lines and everything about it instantly. It was Metallic Cardinal Red and had some rust and wasn’t perfect but I knew this was the car… my car. It cost double the money I had saved though but Dad came through and matched my money to get it. He knew I was a goner the first time I saw it. He just laughed and so did I, the search had triumphant ending, which was also a triumphant beginning.
The Cougar became my best friend, we were both born in the same year and were quite a team. I polished the chrome and made sure it was always perfect looking. It had a 289 in it and would absolutely FLY. My friends loved it…it turned heads everywhere. I really could not believe this was my car.
My first year in college I worked at a body shop. I pumped gas and ran errands for the mechanics and others who worked there. One of the mechanics, by chance, had a 67 Cougar GT, Black on Black and absolutely flawless. He was always tinkering with it and making it better. He showed me for the first time, upfront and personal, the power that a GT with a 390 really had. The 390 was HUGE compared to my 289. His car made my car look a lot more like a kitten compared to his panther of a vehicle. I loved my car but wished I had a GT.
Down the road, my Dad was suddenly transferred to London, England. My mom and my siblings were elated, but I knew it was time for me to leave the nest. My parents were totally against it and threw up every roadblock you could imagine to prevent me from staying in the states while they all relocated to Europe. When the tension became too thick, I would just escape in my Cougar. No one could touch me there. I arranged to stay in the States and despite their concerns, we said our goodbyes and off they went across the Atlantic.
Now I was on my own: just me, my car, my job and school. Unfortunately, a few weeks later, the situation involving where I was going to live fell apart. So there I was on the street, nowhere to go, family in a different country. It was just me and my Cougar and all my possessions that it could hold. I was so glad to have my precious Cougar. It was my home for months, and I showered at the gym.
Eventually I got my own place and back on my feet. 1987 met us with a terrible car accident. Thank God no one was hurt but my Cougar sure was. It spun from front to back and then slammed facing backwards flat against the curb, which took out both wheels and tires on the driver’s side. I knew the car was toast at that point. Sadly, it wasn’t drivable so I needed another car ASAP.
As I signed the paperwork on an 85 Cougar, I watched them haul my car to a distant back lot somewhere. I was so sad. I had dreams of restoring her to perfection and keeping her my whole life. She had SAVED my life as far as I was concerned. There was no way should I have walked away from that accident. I vowed right there and then that someday I would have another 67 Cougar. No way was I going to go my whole life and not have another. I promised myself I would find a GT and restore it to perfection like I really wanted…. someday. I saved all the photos I had of my car and still cherish them to this day.
Twenty years later as I approached my 40th birthday, I knew my current vehicle was not going to make it much longer and I would have to buy another car of some kind. I decided that if I was going to buy another car I was going to get what I had promised myself a long time ago. I was turning 40 and was tired of giving myself excuses. I was finally going to shut up and step up and fulfill my promise to myself.
For weeks I searched online for the right Cougar. I didn’t want a finished one, but rather one I could help build and be a part of the project. I realized then that this project was going to be next to impossible. I was facing numerous long shots: finding a real GT in any condition was next to impossible, my knowledge of fixing up a car from the inside out was zero on top of that, AND I had no garage or place of any kind for the restoration project. However I did not give up. I continued to search and hoped to find the perfect match.
One afternoon I saw an ad for a 67 XR7 that intrigued me. It was a car owned by a man named Ken who just happened to be a master engine builder and restores cars in his own garage all the way up in New Ulm, Minnesota. The Cougar was not a GT but it was at least an XR7. It turned out that someone bought the car from Ken and hired him to restore it and had about $5000 worth of work had been done on it. It turned out that that owner really did not have the finances to complete the restoration and walked away from the project, leaving Ken the owner of the Cougar once again. Ken needed to downsize his inventory, and as much as he liked the car, it had to go. He was asking $3200 for it.
I kicked the idea around for a night or two then went back to the posting. The ad had changed. I read that a bunch of people had contacted Ken offering him $200 or less to take it off his hands. That just pissed him off due to the fact that he could get that much in scrap weight alone. You could tell by the ad that he did not want to get rid of the car, he wished he could keep it for himself. He had done a lot of work on it already and knew its potential for a full restoration. He made it loud and clear it was perfect for that. He also stated that if the car was not purchased by the end of the auction time (which was 3 days later), the Cougar and three other cars would be hauled to the crusher. He said he would rather do that than get robbed by ridiculous offers.
When I saw that I went into high gear. This was EXACTLY what I was looking for. He had the shop, the tools, had already worked on the car, had the knowledge and experience to finish the car and most importantly I could tell he loved that car and it was not something he wanted to crush. I liked that. I decided to see if I could cut a deal with him. When I finally got Ken on the phone we ended up talking for hours. I offered him $5000 for the car, the $1800 difference going towards restoring it and he would do that for me but it would be OUR project. We agreed and were both elated! I bought the car before I ever saw it and before I ever met Ken. This was exactly the unique situation I was looking for - he was the one to help me make the dream of building MY Cougar a reality.
I realized right away that Ken loved Cougars too. I wanted it to be more than just a car and restored as such. I wanted it to be perfect and flawless. I had ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA what it was really going to cost to take on this restoration, and how long it would take at the rate I could afford it. It was not a GT but it was an XR7 and that was good enough for me. I knew that finding and being able to rebuild a real GT was going to be something that I wanted, but at least I was getting what I needed. That was April of 2008. I would restore it and finally have my car I wanted for the past 20 years!
Ken, who I soon began to speak to daily, and I had become fast friends. Over time the 289 was replaced with a 302 and rebuilt with the bigger valve style Shelby heads, the C4 transmission was rebuilt and I even had a Detroit Locker put in the rear. I was learning just how much time and money it was really going to take to finish it.
Everything was going along slow and steady until the economy fell apart in 2008. My paychecks took a serious hit and I lost a lot in the market. Work stopped on the Cougar except whatever Ken was doing with it on his own time. It was frustrating and I was worried that I might have to abandon the project and all the money invested would go down the drain along with my dream. Years had passed with me putting tighter dollars into getting the body perfect, but never having enough to paint it the way I wanted it. This caused him to have to re-do work over and over again with the climate and weather changes. It was frustrating for Ken because he had a business to run and there was my car taking up space in his shop once again.
Meanwhile my friends and family thought I was crazy. I had been at this for three years, at the time, and had still never been to Minnesota or met Ken or even seen my car yet.
Things began to improve at work and so I took the time and spent the money to go to Minnesota, see Ken and my car. It was a great few days! I got to put my hands on my car that would someday, somehow be perfect. I even got to work on her a little bit, cleaning the insulation out of the trunk over the gas tank and getting it down to the bare metal. That took all day! I was seeing and experiencing for the first time how much effort it takes and how quickly money can be spent on materials and parts.
While in Minnesota on a subsequent visit, I began reading a lot of material about my car, its history and all the options the 67 had. I still wished I could have the GT I really wanted. I told Ken all about my longtime dream of having a GT. He told me how he would have loved to be able to restore a real GT, but to try to convert my car at this point would be an expensive task that I would not want to take on. Not to mention we also had recently finished the 302, C4 transmission and rear end.
Ken went on to explain that my car’s front end would not handle the weight of a 390 even if we had one. We would have to beef up the front end including, but not limited to, shock towers, front disc brakes and cross members. As these words came out of his mouth, he sat in deep thought and went over to his computer in deeper thought. Without saying a word he sat down and started looking at a file of pictures of my car that I had never seen before. These pictures were taken as he completed work on the front end for the last owner who had abandoned the project years ago. Not being the mechanic, I had no idea what I was looking at or what he was looking for. He was shaking his head in disbelief. He showed me the shock towers in my car and they were WELDED to the body. He also told me he remembered filling in emblem holes on the front quarter panels when he did the body work there. We sat in confused silence wondering why the shock towers would be welded if a 289 was slated to go into this Cougar originally. Was it possible that this was a GT car and somewhere along the car’s 45 year lifespan the original engine was replaced with the 289? It was a very exciting moment to discover this. Obviously I was blown away at the mere chance of my car being a real GT!
What would we do if it was a GT? We would want to put a bigger engine in it. We did not have the engine or the drivetrain that would be required for a real GT, and to replace what we had would take us back to square one. April 2013 would be five years and neither one of us wanted any more delays.
The next day we ran the serial number on the car at the shop to see what we really had. Ken was glued to his computer looking at pictures of the front end he had taken over 5 years ago. I could tell the idea of potentially having a GT was as exciting for him as it was for me.
It turns out the car was not a GT model. Much to my disappointment the original engine was in fact a 289. I went outside to get some fresh air thinking about how badly I wished it was a REAL GT. About an hour later, Ken called me over to the computer “take a look at this”. I found myself looking at a very simple ad posting on a website Ken found. The link read “Hi-Po 390 $500”. Ken called the number on the ad to just see what it was all about, but it was late and a business was closed. He left a message.
The next day, after a lengthy phone conversation with the seller of the 390, Ken learned that this particular engine had a made-for-cinema history. It was in a 71 Ford truck, impounded by the police, which had sat in a junkyard for over two years. The 71 Ford truck with this engine, outran the cops in multiple counties before having been T-Boned by a police vehicle, while at the same time, getting its tires shredded by razor wire. This engine experienced real life five star action! After two years the police finally released the vehicle. With the owner still incarcerated, the junkyard owner put the engine up for sale and we were the first to respond to the ad.
Ken and I went to check it out. When they lifted the hood of the truck, I could not believe how big this engine was! Ken assured me it would fit in the XR7. It was a dirty, grimy, neglected mess but Ken looked it over with a fine tooth comb and even had the cab cut off the truck to get a better look (see attached photos). Amidst deep examination, he abruptly looked up at the junkyard guy and said “We’ll take it!” So we bought the 390 and the C6 automatic transmission attached to it. Ken looked like the cat that stole the canary, later I found out why.
After breaking down the 390, Ken told me that he would agree to put this big engine in my car- under one condition only…that I let him install 5-point safety harnesses for the front seats. “Once it is finished the way you want it, this Cougar with this engine will BLOW AWAY 95% of anything that pulls up to you at a light,” he said. He told me he could see that a lot of money had been already put into this engine.
Even though we had just finished a new 302, tranny and rear, I wanted the more powerful 390 in my Cougar. So we pulled it all out to make room for this monster engine and transmission. Ken took apart the 390, put new heads on, and did more fine-tuning. The rebuilt transmission was converted to a C6 BulletProof Tranny with extra clutches and steels. The goal was to clone the GT as close as we could. The front end would soon be able to handle the weight and it was worth the additional time and money to have a car that would truly do the 67 Cougar PROUD.
We now have traversed a 5+ year journey of researching rebuilds and which choices best respect the original car, while also maxing out the power. We have the garage, the knowledge, the man-power and many extra parts specifically for the 67 Cougar waiting to be utilized. Most importantly, we have the passion to make this the best 1967 MERCURY COUGAR GT on the planet.
Going forward, my plans for the GT are to put the 390 in it the way God intended. I will put the 302 with the Shelby Heads back in the XR7 I already have. I have the transmission for the GT done. I have numerous parts, if needed, already on hand and paid for. We have put so much love and hard work into the XR7. We are so excited for the opportunity to do it all again! Ken says sometimes when he walks by my car he does a double take because “it looks like it is smiling at me".
My Cougar is something I talk about every day and as much as I love the car I am building now, I know it is a clone and not a true GT – which, as mentioned, is what I have always wanted. If the engine is the heart of a car, then I have the perfect heart transplant for this GT. (AttAched is a picture of the license plate from the truck, just in case anyone wants to do the research on the history of that particular engine.)
An engine and tranny, this unique and special, with such a wild ready-for-film story should be in a car with the same story of revival…the 1967 Mercury Cougar GT that WCCC gave away in their 2013 Essay Contest. It will be rebuilt by two guys who absolutely love that car, in that year, and have been unknowingly working on it for 5 years already.
I want to build THE BEST 1967 MERCURY COUGAR GT EVER! You have the GT and I have the rest. I will spare no expense, even if it takes twice as long to make it perfect. That has been The Code and the same will apply to the GT. The experience and knowledge gained through the rebuild of the XR7 has been priceless in preparing us to rebuild your GT. I am certain it is divined.
Please give her the home she was meant to have. I will park her next to the XR7 I already am working on and finish them both, side by side. It will be a BEAUTIFUL legacy.
Thank you for your time and consideration. To some, this might seem like just a story but to me,
I WAS BORN TO RESTORE THIS 1967 Mercury Cougar GT!************************
***Both Flickr and Facebook require that a user have an account to view the photos:
FLICKR PHOTO GALLERY: Tim Sullivan | Flickr ***********************
FACEBOOK PHOTO GALLERY: https://www.facebook.com/TimothyJ225/media_set?set=a.10201865142856813.1073741825.1430432162&type=3
THIS IS A BORROWED PLACE ON MY FRIENDS WEBSITE, BUT NO REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED:
http://www.texassureplan.com/Tim-Sullivan--Cougar-Contest.html
*** Please note we are not trying to sell anything, we just needed a place to put photos so people who dont want to sign up for facebook or flickr can still view the photos.
