Bill, that’s a great idea about doing an article in LCM 
. In regards to the meaning of XR-7,here’s a link to a forum to the possible meaning. http://www.fordcarz.com/classic-mercury-cars/classic-mercury-cougar.html . Since John Eilertsen gave you the name of someone who could possibly answer that, see if the meaning on the link rings true. John
I have heard that one before and it makes sense. Mercury had used the XR name before.
You may have noticed from time to time that one of the registrars will jump in with both feet when an unsubstantiated claim is made. They don’t do so to be right, they do so knowing that once something shows up on the internet it is frequently copied and it may eventually be treated as fact. This has happened many times in the past, for example the myth that only 188 XR7-G cars had been built, and a later claim that there were over 700. Both were wrong, (619 is the current total).
Bill that is a wonderful idea about Legendary Cougar Magazine. That would be a great first article.
Steven
This is correct. The XR in XR-7 does stand for Experimental Racing.
Great article Bill.
Thanks Bill for the interview, cleared me up on all the gossip about the XR7-S.
My question would have been how did L-M get the 427 approved and keep the Mustang guys from using it. There would have been some movin Mustangs with their lighter weight and more profit for Ford.
Great interview and write up Bill. Thanks
Bill
Great write up and thank you for getting it done.
Sadly bean counters all too often cause great cars to be discontinued. My other Merc, the Marauder is another. It never took on, wasn’t advertised much and was done within 2 years. Glad I have one of them too.
Thanks again.
Bill
I have been saying this for as long as I’ve been a member of this site, and the other forum. L/M, (Ford), NEVER put any $ into advertising, for any of their great cars. Without advertising, you ain’t gonna get that 16 year old pimple popping kid into the showroom.
You ain’t going to get that guy who is 20 or 30 something into the show room, he’s blasted with TV commerciasl from Chevy all night long, every magazine is plastered with Mo Par crap.
Her’s a list, I venture to say that not many of you can remember seeing ANY type of ad for them.
Eliminator
Cyclone
Cyclone GT
XR-7G
GT-E
X-100
Spoiler
Spoiler 2
Cale Yarborough Special
Dan Gurner Special
Anyhow, Inquiring minds want to know, why were the hood scoops on the GT-E and XR-7G non functional, want to bet, BEAN COUNTERS.
Seeing your post reminded me of a thread I started a while back. There was some TV advertising done on the Classic Cougars. They even used celebrities. Maybe not as much advertising as the other big companies but there was some. Take a look and enjoy, I think they are neat.
http://www.classiccougarcommunity.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2283
There was a topic about this a while ago, and I think someone did some actual aerodynamics testing and found that the openings are too small / narrow, and that in fact air would come OUT of the holes, rather than go in, because the volume of air flowing in through the grille would be much greater, and/or because the scoop is low enough to the hood that it’s still in the low pressure air pocket, or something like that. So it would have been pointless with those particular scoops.
The G-Force Cougar (custom built by some talented dudes sometime in the past decade) has a custom, taller version of the G scoop that is actually functional.
I bekieve that most hood scoops actually let air out, unless they are huge, like some of the ones on a MoPar., and I for one don’t believe the engineers really tested to see if they worked, if they did, they’d would have put on bigger scopes, like the 428 GT-E. Or make the scoops the same design, only taller.
Once Ford came out with the CJ, they actually had to get a scoop that worked, to catch up with everyone else.
Bean Counters, extra cost for cutting a hole in the hoods, plain and simple, extra cost for taller scoops. If they can save .01, on a part, it saves the company a ton of money, and that’s why we have recalls, cheap parts, that break down.
There are print ads for the 70 Eliminator, 67 & 68 DGS, 66 or 67 Cyclone, and 69 Cyclone that I am recalling right now. I have a few of them listed for sale on the CougarSwapMeet site right now.
Randy Goodling
CCOA #95
I’m not implying there were NEVER advertised in magazines, just not as often as Chevy products, or for that matter MoPar. You couldn’t help but be bombasted with Chevelle , Camaro ads every month My opinion is L/M Ford, did a disservice to the cars, by not investing enough adv.$.
I’ve got ads of Cyclone’s and GT’s, maybe even a Spoiler. My biggest complaint is TV ads, besides ads for the 67 and 68 Cougar, that’s all I remember, no Cyclones,no GT-E, although we know there was one, how many times did it play, and what markets.
My father had an X-100, I was 19 at the time, and until he brought it home, I’d never heard of it. All I’m saying is that some of our favorite cars would have sold much better, if Ford had invested in adv.
Oh yea, what the heck is a 68 DGS?
DGS = Dan Gurney Special
Here are a couple of TV commercials.
DUH
Everyone it seems, wants to prove me wrong, you are all putting up TV ads that you’ve either hunted for or already have stored on your computer.
YOU"RE not getting my drift. I agree there were magazine ads, and I agree there were TV ads.
But in my opinion, the TV ads were not as frequently shown as with other makes i.e, that is one of the major reasons why these fantastic looking cars, with great performance, didn’t sell as well as other brands, even the Fairlane got short changed.
Now if you all want to keep putting up TV ads, to prove me wrong, then what then, in your opinion, is the reason why these favorite cars of ours,didn’t sell like gangbusters??
Are we abnormal, is the rest of the world smarter than we, is it that these cars we love, were really clunkers, and should be just one rung above an American Motors car?
Which is it, lack of exposure, or clunkers?
You have to understand marketing and advertising of the late 1960’s.
Plus many people couldn’t afford new cars. My parents grew up in the 30’s and 40’s, they were thrifty and never went into debt except for the house.
Cougars weren’t necessarily marketed as muscle cars, they were upscale pony cars. I had read somewhere that Cougars were specifically targeted to working women as one segment.
The 1967 sales target was 60,000 cars, exceeded that target with 150,000 sold.
I don’t know what the subsequent targets were, but advertising and marketing budgets are set, based on target sales at the beginning of the year.
Ford was an owner of Hertz Rental Cars. Lots of upscale cars were sent to major city airport Hertz agencies for exposure. XR7-G, Eliminator, Shelby Mustangs, etc. This was part of the overall marketing plan. Got the cars on the street and lots of people got some personal seat time with those cars.
Cobrasc427 I don’t think that they are trying to prove you wrong, just pointing out that the commercials did exist.
I did ask specifically about the end of the XR7-G program and what he told me was that Ford bean counters did not love those programs because the cost of keeping spare parts to support the cars for 10 years was just too high. If you study the proposal documents for the XR7-G it looks like the idea of selling 200 cars to Hertz was appealing enough to justify doing the program from the marketing guys view point, but when it percolated down to the bean counters they didn’t see 200 sales, they saw the cost of keeping parts for 10 years.
The GT-E ended for a different reason. The price for the GT-E option was about $1311. Or you could order the 428CJ in any Cougar for $420.95, and a ton of stuff was part of the CJ option. It made the GT-E trim and paint pretty expensive, even with the cool exhaust tips thrown in.
Originally, they only expected to sell 60K Cougars and in year one they sold over 150K. That is a huge success. But if 60K total was the goal, what was the goal for any of the specialty cars? I worked on a special edition of the Focus that was targeted for just 4K units and maxed out at 7K. Maybe they considered these cars a success even though the numbers were small. I do know with that special edition Focus that they felt it would sell at least twice that many regular production units to people that would be interested in the special and then buy the regular production car. To some extent they didn’t care what the special sold so l long as people came in to the show room. John told me that the Cougar sold a lot of Comets and Montegos to guys that wanted a Cougar but needed a bigger car for the family. Cougar made Mercury cool again.
And if you ask my wife, we are abnormal and the rest of the world is smarter than us! LOL!