Great idea…does anyone know where the prototype G went? The Gs are so cool.
There is no photo in any of your posts.
Steven
Either I don’t quite know how to share images on this site or my access is limited to writing only. If an administrator wants to contact me, I can send the G images to them and they can share it with the group.
Which one(s), the marketing/car show unit or the Smith ‘try it out’ unit?
A contemporary color image of the Prototype Gold Sunroof 1968 Mercury Cougar XR7-G with a lady model between a White 1968 Mercury Cougar. Photo is courtesy of ‘Muscle Cars, American Icons.’
That is a cool picture Cgrhj50.
It is obviously from the same photoshoot as the b/w photo I posted earlier in this thread.
I would imagine these are from Ford’s archives and hopefully they will release them soon through their Ford Images website.
- Phillip
Here is an interesting newspaper ad from 1968 where they used a pic of the G prototype that is in the internal sales brochure.
- Phillip
While Mercury had a great advertising push in 1966-67 to get the buying public enthused for their exciting all new Cougar, clearly they ‘dropped the ball’ when it came to the promotion of the XR7-G. Take this ad for instance. They waste copy room repeating “Sporty” without really detailing the unique features of this Mercury Cougar. Who knows how many more of these really well appointed Cats we’d see today, if they had focused on this vehicle better…Thanks for sharing these rare ad pieces on my favorite rare Cougar!
I absolutely agree with you. Mercury’s lack of promotion for the G is puzzling. It’s almost as if they had already given up on them before production was finished.
Here is another vintage newspaper ad that features a very cool XR7-G illustration. I don’t own this ad, and it is difficult to read, so I can’t tell if they even mention the XR7-G.
All the car manufactures back then sent advertising packets to dealerships that contained newspaper ready clip art of logos, graphics and cars, so that the individual dealers could put together their own ads for local newspapers.
Apparently, artwork of the G was created and included in these packets. So, besides the well-known color sunroof ad that ran in The Post, you can add this illustration to Mercury’s extremely limited G promotions.
- Phillip
Phillip, I just e-mailed you my copies of this original ad. Maybe you can get better info from what I have.
From what I have learned from interviews, when the senior accounting people at Ford learned what the marketing guys at Mercury were doing with the XR7-G they killed it. They felt like it was going to hurt the sales of the Shelby Mustang which was not doing all that well to begin with. Other than Hertz there had not been a big rush of dealer orders for the car. They canceled all of the advertising for the G immediately.
The Sunroof ad that was in Life magazine was purchased as what is called a remainder. Life magazine would produce regional issues of the magazine that would include additional advertising pages targeted at specific regions. When you insert a new page in a magazine you actually have to fill four full pages. If you had orders for three, and the print dead line was eminent, they would offer a big discount on the "remaining"left over page. The agency that handled LM scooped up the cheap ad space that would actually go to print just a few days later. Any regular advertising pages could be canceled or changed out, but the remainder ad was already in print.
There was another factor that played into the decision. A.O. Smith had been building Corvette bodies until the '86 Stingray introduction. They sought the Shelby and XR7-G as a replacement for the Vette business. They were proposing all kinds of fiberglass hoods and even entire front ends like the '69 Shelby to keep their business going. Ford really didn’t care about A.O. Smith, but they were deeply concerned with problems that started with the fiberglass hoods headlamp buckets and valances on the Shelbys. The new for '69 XR7-G would have been a regular production vehicle not a Shelby. In some ways it was easier for Ford to take a Mustang from the Metuchen plant to Ionia Michigan than it was to take a Cougar from the Dearborn plant. There was no direct rail service from Dearborn to Ionia meaning that everything had to go by truck.
Finally, as late as May of 1968 the Marketing people at Mercury were still planning on the '69 XR7-G for 1969. I suspect that the high speed development of the Eliminator came in part as a response to the necessity of replacing the XR7-G that had just been cancelled.
That’s fascinating Bill - yet another case where Ford pruned back on the Cougar when it was feared it would somehow take anything away from the Mustang.
Attached is a much nicer copy of the XR7-G newspaper add, courtesy Jim Pinkerton and Scott Ferguson.
Oh, and there is no mention of the G, just the sunroof option.
- Phillip
Sadly, there probably hasn’t been another marque like Mercury’s unique Cougar which has had such an incredibly Schizophrenic career! From the original, nothing short of brilliant, inspired design and marketing of the first generation 67-68 Cougars to gasp Cougar ‘badged’ Country Squire Stationwagons, I can’t think of another vehicle which suffered such design miasma.
What a shame too. Imagine if the original designers had been successful in convincing the tight purse string money managers to let them make a 67 Cougar Convertible. Designs were on the drawing board. Kevin Marti’s prototype clearly shows what a distinctive ride this can be. Even with incredible, historic run away success of the Mustang, management was in my view too conservative in their handling of the Cougar. How many thousands more Cougars would have been sold if there had been Convertibles alongside Hardtops?
Now I read that the most inspired, unique XR7-G was ‘hamstrung’ by Ford management which feared internecine competition with their own Shelbys. Such a shame.