Looking thru my website readership statistics, I've found that a number of people have searched and found Capri and Cougar pages and blog entries in amongst the 12,000 total pages that make up this site. To help surface all of this material I've added separate categories in my blogs for the Capri and Cougar. For the Capri, I'll cover both the American and German models... and maybe sometime in the future will say a few words about the obscure and thankfully dead Australian model.
I've been blogging for several years, and have discussed about the likelihood (very very very small) of a new Cougar based on the S197 Mustang. I've also covered the SVT-powered Cougar S on my site... there was exactly 1 prototype built (and later auctioned) before Ford cancelled the project after the decision was made to drop the European Mondeo (Contour) from production in the United States. I saw it in person, I photographed it, and web readers have found the pics on my site (1 is below). There have also been other Cougar or Cougar-esque (ex: the Mercury Messenger) concepts, prototypes, and showcars presented by Ford over the last 10 years - and those are also covered on my site.
And while I never owned an American FOX-chassis Capri (see my blog entry yesterday for the story of what happened there), I did own a German Capri and even ice-raced it (picture below). I wrote up that story up a few years ago from my tortured memories of the frozen wasteland of Buffalo.
The one Cougar I owned was in college - a '70 XR-7 (picture below). I wish I had it today because Cougars are appreciating in value and should continue to do so.
As with all my blogs, you can explore old postings two ways:
- "Index of all Postings" to the upper left of the site
- "Prior Posts by Date" to the upper right.
While Ford is 100% dead in the water on any possibility of a new Capri or Cougar (due to Bill Ford's incompetence)... I would believe that those names could come back again some day if small, lithe, and comfortable small coupes come back into fashion. Alas, the S197 Mustang is too large to make a modern Cougar or Capri... perhaps the upcoming all-new Australian chassis in the next decade could yield a new Cougar.
