Survivor Cat: 1973 Mercury Cougar Convertible

I clearly remember the first time I saw a new for ’67  Mercury Cougar – and I thought it was fabulous! I hadn’t been much of a Mustang fan, though it wasn’t long before I came to realize that the Cougar was closely related to its extremely popular cousin. But the Cougar spoke to me in a way the Mustang didn’t. My interest in the cat waned with the introduction of the ’71 edition, but I now favored it even more than the corresponding and redesigned BIG Mustang. Move forward two years, and voila, we have, for your review and courtesy of Curvette, a similar ’73 edition – in drop-top form, marking the true end of the line (Cougar, in my estimation, came completely off the rails in ’74 with a move to the midsize Montego platform). This very clean convertible is located in Seattle, Washington, and is available here on craigslist for $15,900.

Cougar, in ’73, offered two body styles, coupe or convertible, and two trim levels, standard, such as our subject car, and XR-7. Yes, it had grown up quite a bit from its original 1967 incarnation, but still sold well, knocking out 61K units in ’73. The convertible proved not to be as popular, with only 4,400 seeing the light of day that year. Largely unchanged from the Gen II introduction in ’71, the most obvious difference for ’73 was the addition of the federally mandated five MPH front rammer. That noted, I’d suggest that Mercury engineers and stylists did a pretty good job of affixing the sizeable protuberance to the nose of their pony car. This one’s a looker – all of it. The finish is well preserved, and the folding top shows as new. The seller claims “always garaged,” and that’s easy to believe. Note the “Styled Steel” wheels; other than the center cap, they’re reminiscent of Chevrolet’s ubiquitous “Rally Wheel”.

I’ll admit that I wasn’t a fan of early seventies kitchen appliance hues – and like them even less as a car interior shade. Sure, the innards of this 81 K-mile Cougar look fine, certainly not too much time in top-down sun mode, but avocado green? Well, OK, I guess, it was a sign of the times – and it is certainly a departure from today’s boring abyss commonly found in most new cars. This ragtop even has a top boot – I wonder how hard it would be to find another in avocado? As is often the case with convertibles from this era, there is no A/C.

Besides the big front bumper, another sign of the times was diminished HP, once again, thanks to the Fed and its regulations. In this case, our Cougar’s 351 CI V8 manages an output of 154 net HP – while not impressive, it is pretty typical for the early-mid seventies. The seller adds, “Can be driven anywhere.” A four-speed manual gearbox was still available as an option in ’73, but this Cougar possesses the standard, and commonly found, three-speed automatic transmission.

I like this car! It’s not something that I would want to own today, but maybe at some time in the past – I can really appreciate its condition – and really, its rarity too. Yes, it works for me; how about you?