5k: Shady Acres Pimp: 1989 Mercury Cougar LS

Imagine for a minute that you are the king of the Shady Acres Retirement Village.  When curtain drops at 4:45pm for the Thursday Night movie, you’ve got your pick of the able bodied hotties and you need a ride that will make those Depends drop.  What you need is a hearing aid beige coupe with some 14-inch steel wheels covered by wire caps and shod in thin white stripe tires, with a luggage rack, landau top, and 6-inch wide chrome door strip, — the ultimate cougar bait.  Find this 1989 Mercury Cougar LS currently bidding for $3,050 reserve-not-met on ebay in Warwick, NY with 4 days to go.

The seventh generation Mercury Cougar was built from 1989 to 1997 on Ford’s MN12 platform, a mid-sized body that shared its oily bits with the Ford Thunderbird and Lincoln Mark VIII.  Mercury even introduced an XR-7 version that had a supercharged V6 with available 5-speed manual, but hey now…slow down son, you shouldn’t be in a such a hurry.

Under the hood of this low mile Cougar is a fuel injected 3.8 liter V6, good for 140 horsepower. That’s not much but it will propel the beast’s 3800 lbs of road hugging weight up to within 5 miles per hour of the local speed limit…why would you need to go any faster?  This car has about 6,600 miles on the odometer because the local 99 cents store is only two or three curbs away from the retirement village parking spot.

OOooooo eeeee, I love the future baby, and the future is here!!!  Check out that digital dash!   The Ford shade of digital daze green is slightly more yellow than the royal rental green you find in similar era GM product (or the alarm clock peridot you find in Chryslers), but thankfully the fonts are the same. Is the digital dash response time too slow to keep up with the raging torrent of torque and burning fossil fuel under the hood?  How the heck would you know, this baby has only ever seen 1/4 open throttle and has likely never gotten out of closed loop mode.  Fuel enrichment is when the price of premium goes up!

Its also got a stereo – one that is perfectly capable of modulating the volume to acceptably calm levels when music is playing, but will instantly ramp up to 11 when talk radio is involved. 

See a better use of blue fabric on the outside of a vehicle?  tips@dailyturismo.com