Why I’m the guy to rescue this car from the crusher
I am submitting that me and my brother be given the opportunity to restore this classic Cougar. We have done multiple restorations together and I forward the following essay to establish our Resto Cred:
June 28, 2013
My name is James Showalter and I am writing this essay because I want to nominate me and my brother as the individuals selected to restore the 1967 Mercury Cougar GT that is being provided by West Coast Classic Cougar. After reading my essay I hope you agree that we are the guys who can complete this project and bring back to life a spectacular American made muscle car from those glory days of Detroit steel. Since I will be working with my brother I am dedicating this essay to his history of classic car restoration.
To start I will introduce my brother Steven Showalter who lives in Chalmette, Louisiana. Steven, like the Cougar GT, was born in 1967 which places him a bit on the younger side of those who remember the days when the Cougar GT first prowled the back-roads and by-ways of America during the muscle-car era. Steven was born with the spirit of muscle car in his blood and this fact became obvious very early in life. His first car was a ’69 Mustang that he bought from his High School principal. So his entry into the Ford classics was this lime green plain Jane coupe that wasn’t running too well. With the help of our father who was an old school car guy he got the old 302/C4 drive-train running pretty good. But running pretty good was not good enough for my brother. Soon he had it polished up with shiny wheels and a loud exhaust that gave it attitude and then immediately sold it after only being the owner for a few weeks. We couldn’t believe all of the hard work he had put into that car and then sold it. That’s when he brought home his second car.
The story of Steven’s second car is really the starting point and ending point of this essay. What he showed up with next was a bright red with white hood stripes 1965 Mustang Fastback Shelby clone with a trunk full of parts. In fact, there was an original Autolite-4100 carburetor in that trunk that wound up on my ’68 Cougar XR7 restoration that we did together some years later but that is a story that I’ll save for when I’ve convinced you that Steven is the guy for this Cougar project. Now back to that ’65 Fastback. This was a hot-rod Shelby clone in the spirit of Eleanor before the story of Eleanor was even conceived in the hallways of Hollywood. It had the fiberglass add-ons to the quarters and a just so subtle hood scoop. Under that hood resided a 289 with the performance heads, exhaust and intake to feed it plenty of fuel and it was bolted to a top-loader 4-speed transmission and a posi-traction rear-end that wasn’t geared for the interstate. I was lucky enough to have driven that car and it was awesome, a rock-solid example from the glory days of American muscle. Later on that car got stolen right out of the front yard in the wee-hours of a summer morning. My other brother Chris was driving at that time and still owns a 1968 Mustang Fastback. He heard the car was stolen so he mounted his steed and went cruising around in the back alleys of New Orleans East and found that car. The interior was stripped out of it and every lug from each wheel was gone except that one funky clover shaped locking lug that they sold back in the day to prevent exactly the kind of theft that was attempted on those wheels. Now let’s fast forward a decade.
Steven had to get rid of the ’65 in order to pay rent and buy diapers but he never lost the spirit that that car represented in his life. There were many project cars through those years – a ’71 coupe for his wife, an ’85 GT as a driver, a ’69 Coupe Convertible that he put a modern 5.0 drive-train in and more projects in and out of his garage than I can count. Ford projects were the rule in his garage whether they were his own or being worked on for a friend needing some life put back into an old pony. I was the older brother who watched as so many projects came and went and their complexity got more and more integral to the restoration of the uni-body of the old Fords. Regardless of what sheet metal or supporting metal needed replacing Steven would figure out how to do it and the end product was often better than the original. Be it the floor-pans, tail-light panel, full or even partial quarter panel repair and replacement or anything mechanical there were no boundaries on his imagination and ability to restore a car. It wasn’t until I dragged home a project car myself that I realized that Steven had evolved into the highest level of American Muscle Car enthusiast – he was part of the Ford guy elite – he was an artist. He immediately looked at the ’67 Coupe I had brought to his house and told me to keep the drive-train and throw the rest away. Then he must have sensed the hurt I felt and told me that it just needed a little work and it would be a good driver. He gave it a name, called it Frankenstang and we proceeded to replace every piece of sheet-metal aside from the top and the drivers rear quarter on the car. It took a lot of work and it was during this time that I realized how good Steven was at reviving these old cars. We did the floor-pans, the right rear quarter, the cowl, the hump in the floor where a previous owner had chopped a hole to make a transmission that wasn’t meant to be there fit. We painted it maroon like many of those cars were back in their day and the completed project was a very nice ’67 driver that remains a prized possession of a good friend of mine. In fact, I enjoyed working on this project so much that shortly after completion I bought the ’68 Cougar XR7 that we later restored and which is my classic car to this day. That Cougar project was a 100% original ground up restoration.
Steven’s enthusiasm for all things Ford continued to enlarge over the years. The ’67 project we did was mostly done outside behind his one car garage. He out grew that garage I think the day after he moved in. When he bought his next house it did not have a garage and before he had his furniture arranged in it he had drawn up plans to build one. This was a big garage that could hold multiple car projects at one time and that’s where we did the Cougar. There was our buddy Dennis’ ’65 coupe project going on at the same time and the place was where the classic car guys hung out and mostly talked Ford-speak. I remember the first big-block car project Steven got into. He found a ’68 Fastback in a lady’s back yard in New Orleans that had been there for so long it had a tree growing through the engine compartment. There wasn’t much car there but it was a ’68 Fastback that could roll and had a title so out came the chainsaws and he dragged the car home. It was an original 302/C4 car that needed every panel worked on but it was coming back to life because he said so. He got creative and made and installed all of the suspension supports to match the S-code Mustangs, located a strong rebuilt 390 and a 4-speed with a posi-traction rear-end, put together a top notch interior and painted it red. The end product was perfection in muscle-car attitude. That car was in his garage with another '68 Fastback project and our friend Jeff’s ’65 Fastback (a California car brought back after his Navy career) when Hurricane Katrina flooded all of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. Steven lost pretty much everything to that storm but that was a long time ago. As an aside that will let you know how Steven manages life I’ll tell you the story about him staying at home during the storm. We kept calling him and begging that he leave but he wouldn’t go. He stayed there in Chalmette and when the water came up he got in his boat and spent 3 days rescuing people who were stranded and brought them back to safety. When it was obvious that he had to leave the Parish he put a lifejacket on his dog and together they got into a 16’ flat boat and led a flotilla of other small boats out of St. Bernard and across about 40-miles of Lake Pontchartrain to Mandeville and then hitch-hiked to Covington, Louisiana where my family was huddled at my sister’s. That’s when we found out he survived the storm. Steven is a can-do guy.
Since then the garage has been brought back to life and Steven has completed several Ford projects. His most recent is his pride and joy. A bright red with white stripes ’66 Fastback with a stroker motor, 4-speed, posi-traction rear-end and a beautiful Pony interior. The car is very impressive. It is my opinion, and not just mine alone, that Steven is an impressive guy. He is the guy that you would want to complete this ’67 Cougar GT restoration. Together we have all the resources - the talent, tools, garage with welding and paint capability and proven skills to do the job right. Besides all that - it’s in our blood.
Here is a pic of the '69 convertible Steven put the 5.0 drive-train in (5-spd OD). He made the roll bar too.
http://i1331.photobucket.com/albums/w599/MSCatMan/Mystang013_zps5b04e5e1.jpg
This is a pic of Steven’s '66 Fastback sitting in his garage:
http://i1331.photobucket.com/albums/w599/MSCatMan/photo8_zps3a9c72a6.jpg
And this is a pic of my '68 XR7 that we completed in 2002:
http://i1331.photobucket.com/albums/w599/MSCatMan/P7040852_zpsbb98c7b2.jpg
