The Ford Cougar is a

coupé A coupe or coupé (, ) is a passenger car with a sloping or truncated rear roofline and two doors. The term ''coupé'' was first applied to horse-drawn carriages for two passengers without rear-facing seats. It comes from the French past parti ...

that was produced and sold in the European market between 1998 and 2002, and sold in Canada and the United States from 1999 until 2002 as the

Mercury Cougar Mercury Cougar is a nameplate applied to a diverse series of automobiles sold by the Mercury division of Ford from 1967 to 1997 and from 1999 to 2002. While the nameplate is most commonly associated with two-door coupes, at various times during ...

. The car was originally intended to be the third generation Probe, but after rationalization of the three coupés available in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

, the Probe name was dropped in favor of the Cougar. It is an example of a sports

liftback A liftback is a variation of hatchback with a sloping roofline between 45 and 5 degrees. Traditional hatchback designs usually have a 90 to 46 degree slope on the tailgate or rear door. As such the liftback is essentially a hatchback with a more ...

History

The Cougar was Ford's second attempt to reintroduce a sports coupé in Europe, in the same vein as the successful, but long discontinued

Capri Capri ( , ; ; ) is an island located in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrento Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples in the Campania region of Italy. The main town of Capri that is located on the island shares the name. It has been ...

– the first attempt having been the

Mazda MX-6 The Mazda MX-6 is a front-engine, front-wheel-drive coupé manufactured and marketed by Mazda from 1987-1997 across two generations. Mechanically identical to the Capella/626 and its hatchback platform mate, the Ford Probe, these cars shared th ...

based Probe. Just as the Capri had been based on the Cortina, the Cougar was based on the

large family car The D-segment is the 4th category of the Euro Car Segment, European segments for passenger cars, and is described as "large cars". It is equivalent to the Euro NCAP "large family car" size class, and the present-day definition of the mid-size ...

available at the time, the

Mondeo The Ford Mondeo is a large family car manufactured by Ford since 1993. The first Ford model declared as a "world car", the Mondeo was intended to consolidate several Ford model lines worldwide (the European Sierra, the Telstar in Asia and Austr ...

. The car went on sale in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

in December 1998 to mixed reviews, partly due to the then-new and controversial

New Edge New Edge was a design language used by Ford Motor Company for many of its passenger vehicles in the late 1990s and early 2000s and initially authored by Jack Telnack, who served as Vice President of Design for Ford from 1980 to 1997. Under Telnack ...

styling, a crisp style which was subsequently applied to most of the Ford range. Cougar sales levels did not achieve those of predecessor Capri models. Like its (indirect) predecessor, the Ford Probe, the 1998 Cougar was sold and built in the

. Cars destined to be sold in Europe and the United Kingdom were finished in Ford's

Köln Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 million ...

plant in Germany, where the cars had European specification lighting installed, Ford badges applied (and in the case of the United Kingdom and Australian cars, converted to RHD); in the United States, it had different branding, in this case being branded as the Mercury Cougar, while in Europe and Australia, it was known as the Ford Cougar. In Britain, Ford unveiled the car in July 1998, at the British Grand Prix, Silverstone. The television advertisements featured the silver model driven by

Dennis Hopper Dennis Lee Hopper (May 17, 1936 – May 29, 2010) was an American actor, filmmaker and photographer. He attended the Actors Studio, made his first television appearance in 1954, and soon after appeared in ''Giant'' (1956). In the next ten years ...

due to his appearance in the film ''

Easy Rider ''Easy Rider'' is a 1969 American independent drug culture road drama film written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda, and directed by Hopper. Fonda and Hopper play two bikers who travel through the American So ...

''. At the same time, Steppenwolf's song from 1968, "Born To Be Wild" played, as this was featured in the film and the same scene the advertisement recreated. The Cougar was retired from the European market in August 2002, after its withdrawal from Britain, in February 2001. After the first two years of production, only 12,000 units reportedly had been sold in the United Kingdom. Released in Australia in October 1999, the Cougar only came with the 2.5 L 24-valve Duratec V6, and sales continued until March 2004.

Technical

Mechanical

Cougar was built on the Ford Mondeo sedan platform providing it with a good ride and compared to other coupes along with "reasonably generous" interior room. The Cougar came equipped with the 2.0 L 16-valve Zetec, or the 2.5 L 24-valve Duratec V6 engines with two specification levels, largely equivalent to a Mondeo Ghia (standard) and Ghia X (simply X). Manual and automatic transmissions were available. All variants came with 16-inch

alloy wheel In the automotive industry, alloy wheels are wheels that are made from an alloy of aluminium or magnesium. Alloys are mixtures of a metal and other elements. They generally provide greater strength over pure metals, which are usually much softe ...

s as standard. The standard 2.0 L version was rated at while the 2.5 L was rated at .

Specifications

Handling

The car's handling has been described by as “puts its power down effectively and tackles twisty roads with confidence." The standard wheels had 215 mm wide

tyres A tire (American English) or tyre (British English) is a ring-shaped component that surrounds a Rim (wheel), wheel's rim to transfer a vehicle's load from the axle through the wheel to the ground and to provide Traction (engineering), t ...

, which contributed to its cornering abilities. Long trips by ''Car and Driver'' resulted in numerous "uncomplimentary observations concerning the driver's seat."

Extras

An "X-Pack" was available on the larger engine; this included leather upholstered and heated front seats, with six-way electric adjustment for the driver's seat, and a Ford RDS6000 six-speaker radio with six-CD autochanger. Available at an extra cost, and not included in the "X-Pack" were heated windscreen, electric tilt, slide

sunroof A sunroof is a movable panel that opens to uncover a window in an automobile roof, allowing light and fresh air to enter the passenger compartment. Sunroofs can be manually operated or motor driven, and are available in many shapes, sizes and styl ...

, and

metallic paint Metallic paint, also called metal flake or polychromatic, is a type of paint that is most common on new automobiles, but is also used for other purposes. Metallic paint can reveal the contours of bodywork more than non-metallic, or "solid" paint. ...

Safety and security

The standard safety kit includes driver, passenger, and side airbags, plus

anti-lock brakes An anti-lock braking system (ABS) is a safety anti-skid braking system used on aircraft and on land vehicles, such as cars, motorcycles, trucks, and buses. ABS operates by preventing the wheels from locking up during braking, thereby maintainin ...

and seat belts that reduce chest injuries. The Cougar included an engine immobilizer, remote control central and double locking systems, and an alarm.

References

External links

* {{Ford Motor Company vehicles

Cougar The cougar (''Puma concolor'') is a large Felidae, cat native to the Americas. Its Species distribution, range spans from the Canadian Yukon to the southern Andes in South America and is the most widespread of any large wild terrestrial mamm ...

Front-wheel-drive vehicles Coupés Sport compact cars Hatchbacks 2000s cars Cars introduced in 1998