Artist Renders Supremely Luxurious Mustang-based Mercury Cougar
Sadly, the Mercury Cougar upmarket muscle car will likely never return, but it’s fun to imagine the possibilities.
It’s been over nine years since the last Mercury, a Grand Marquis, rolled off the assembly line. It’s been even longer since we’ve seen our last Cougar, which was discontinued after the 2002 model year.
Originally, the Cougar started out as a higher-end (but still muscular) cousin to the Mustang. Later on, the Cougar morphed into a personal luxury coupe, sold as an upmarket companion to the Thunderbird. In its final iteration, it was a European-style front wheel drive liftback coupe. It wasn’t even available with a V8.
A digital artist going by the name of Abimelec Design has re-imagined the S550 Mustang as a modern Mercury Cougar. It’s a retro-futuristic design, a modern take on the first-generation car adapted to the 21st century.
With the brand long dead and gone, there’s no hope of ever seeing this, or any new Mercury, in the front window of your local Ford store. However, it’s an interesting flight of fancy.
It’s All in the Details
The exterior appears to draw much of its influence from the Mustang GT350R. Of course, the first generation Cougar’s hideaway headlights and wide taillights are represented here. The aggressive body kit reminds us of the legendary Cougar Eliminator.
Modern Mustangs are much more luxurious than their predecessors. However, this rendering really stepped things up to put the modern Mercury Cougar a cut above. The oak wood-grain dash reminds us of the sporty but decidedly high-end XR-7 trim, available on the early Cougars.
The ivory shade shown for the interior looks perfect to us. However, several other options are shown, including red and caramel. The designer states that ten different interior choices would be offered in total. We love all of them, and it makes us wish that the current Mustang offered more interior color options.
According to the description supplied by Abimelec Design, the Cougar doesn’t intend to step on the Mustang’s V8 muscle car toes too much. This fantasy Cougar would be powered by a 450 horsepower EcoBoost V6. In this case, we’d be just fine without a V8.
Photos: Abimelec Design
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