The Sign of the Cat - 1967 Mercury Cougar | The Online Automotive Marketplace

It should have been perfect, a Cinderella story rivaling those of the 1969 Mets, 1969 Jets and the 2004 Red Sox. The plot was ideal: The traditional poor-relation division of a major automaker, saddled with a comparatively minuscule budget, very nearly snatching a major manufacturer’s racing title with new pony cars the company was still trying to figure out how to promote.

In the end, it was too good to happen. The factory Mercury Cougar team was painfully edged by its corporate rival for the 1967 manufacturer’s title in the Sports Car Club of America’s Trans American Sedan Series. By all indications, that was uncomfortably close to unhorsing Ford’s cash cow, the Mustang, in such a publicly visible manner, and despite the Cougar team’s obvious élan, Ford executives abruptly pulled the plug on the Mercury effort. Regardless, Mercury aficionados regard the Trans-Am effort as one of their proudest moments in motorsports.

It’s a flashback of racing history that lives on in this 1967 Trans Am Cougar, the prototype for two additional Cougar race cars that followed, all of which competed in that lone, but unforgettable, season on the road courses. Just into its second season, the Trans-Am had already gained a formidable reputation as the field of combat for the pony-car producers, which were battling for recognition as new entries flooded the market segment, trying to knife sales numbers off the Mustang’s slab-like marketing juggernaut.

As the 1966 model year wound to its conclusion, Ford had already approved the Cougar as a pony player for Lincoln-Mercury. At the end of 1966, Ford had produced 1,288,557 Mustangs since its mid-1964 introduction, and that single model accounted for an amazing 7.1 percent of the entire U.S. automotive market. That same year, in the inaugural Trans-Am season, Mustang won the Over-2.0-Liter manufacturer’s title in a rout, in the personages of Carroll Shelby and his driver, Jerry Titus.

Competitors saw this view plenty, but Mustang ultimately snatched 1967 Trans-Am title.

In mid-1966, Lincoln-Mercury public relations chief Monty Roberts managed to win approval for a Cougar Trans-Am campaign in 1967, to be headed by Fran Hernandez, a fabled dry-lakes engine builder from Los Angeles who had risen through Ford’s ranks to become competition director at Lincoln-Mercury. The logical choice as head fabricator and mechanic was Walter “Bud” Moore, a fabled NASCAR team owner who operated Bud Moore Engineering in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Hernandez and Moore had a relationship that went back several years, as Moore had flown the Mercury flag in NASCAR going back to when Joe Weatherly was his driver. More recently, a Moore-built Comet Cyclone had won the 1966 Southern 500, with Darel Dieringer driving, despite lack of direct factory support or major sponsorship.

With a hurry-up order to start a new race team, Moore and Hernandez had to scramble mightily. This Moore-built Trans-Am Cougar, the first of three built in total, is owned by longtime Trans-Am historian and vintage racer David Tom. It was rapidly cobbled together in time for a press conference on November 2, 1966, in Carmel, California, which introduced the Mercury Trans Am equipe. That initial prototype was also the “hom*ologation” car, used to win approval for competition from the FIA, the governing body of world motorsport.

“Lincoln-Mercury had sent the first one out to either Kar Kraft or Dearborn Steel and Tubing, both longtime Ford subcontractors on special projects, I’m not sure which,” David said. “It was something that was originally intended for either SCCA A/Sedan or else FIA Group 2 saloon racing in Britain and Europe. When it got to the press conference, all it had was a single roll hoop with two rear-facing braces.”

Also on hand were the team’s primary drivers, Dan Gurney and Parnelli Jones. At Moore’s shop, Mercury’s biggest race was already under way: To prepare three SCCA-legal Trans Am cars in time for the 300-mile season opener at Daytona International Speedway’s road course on February 3. The second and third cars started out as off-the-line production sedans intended to be built with the 390 GT package; big-block Cougars had beefier front-end components, such as control arms, that would be beneficial in Trans-Am racing, even though the series’ maximum displacement limit was 305 cubic inches.

All three cars were raced during the 1967 season. While two Cougars were entered in every Trans-Am event, all three cars were entered at Sebring and reportedly at the Marlboro 300 in Maryland. As for David’s car, its season record first saw Ed Leslie, another Moore team driver, finish fifth overall at Sebring’s four-hour Trans-Am round after both Jones and Gurney fell out. At Marlboro, engine problems prevented the prototype from qualifying. It next showed up at Crow’s Landing in Modesto, California, a former Navy air base, where Leslie started and finished sixth. Renumbered 15, it then showed up for Round 10 at Riverside International Raceway, where NASCAR star David Pearson would drive it to its only Trans-Am win after starting from the outside pole. At the penultimate event at Stardust International Raceway in Las Vegas, a youthful Peter Revson, the future international star who also started several races for Moore that year, was gridded seventh in David’s car but was DNFed in 19th.

His car raced last that year at the season finale in Kent, Washington, which still ranks among the series’ most memorable events. Mercury was barely leading Ford in the manufacturer’s points. Gurney started David’s car, its number returned to its normal 98, but suffered problems almost immediately, starting when a rock thrown up by Jones’s Cougar broke, and later imploded, his windshield. Next, a cut tire forced him to make an unscheduled pit stop. On a subsequent pit stop, the gas cap was left loose and fell off, earning Gurney a black flag. Meanwhile, Jones’s car wouldn’t restart after his own pit stop. Gurney would heroically charge back to third at the finish, but Ronnie Bucknum’s second in a Shelby-prepped Mustang gave Ford the manufacturer’s title by two points.

The closeness of the point race, and the Cougars’ clear advantage in terms of media attention, created open acrimony between the Ford and Mercury teams by the end of the season. Ford pulled the plug on the Cougar program late enough in the year to leave Gurney, Jones, et al without full-time rides for the 1968 program. Moore, as David tells it, “managed to convince NASCAR founder Bill France that he was missing the boat by not having a pony-car division, so France created what was first called the GT Division and, later, the Grand American Division, mostly on oval tracks. Bud sold my car, converted the other two over to NASCAR specs and built two or three more Cougars. Tiny Lund would win him the 1968 Grand American championship.”

As for the Moore prototype, it ended up in the hands of a Connecticut team consisting of Paul Pettey, Bruce Jennings and Charlie Rainville, the last of whom would later become president of the International Motor Sports Association. They renumbered the car and entered it in the 1968 12 Hours of Sebring. In the 10th hour of the race, the clutch disintegrated and shrapnel slashed the Cougar’s brake lines, leaving Rainville sitting helplessly as the car drilled a sand dune and flipped end over end repeatedly. The car was destroyed, but Rainville was unhurt and the team was actually credited with 10th overall.

More than 20 years later, David found himself on the hunt for authentic Trans-Am cars to restore, having already discovered one of the Chaparral Camaros that Jim Hall and Leslie raced in 1970. Years later, after serving as a college dean and teaching consultant, David became a founding member of the Historic Trans-Am organization, which admits only those cars that have documented race histories from the original Trans-Am series that lasted from 1966 through 1972. He also administers the Historic Trans-Am Registry, helped organize a Trans-Am reunion at Watkins Glen in 1995, and operates the website www.racepast.com, dedicated to Trans-Am and stock car history.

It was through this network that he learned the remains of a Bud Moore Cougar had been located in Connecticut. Upon examining what was left, he spotted the 1966 prototype’s rear roll-cage hoop, which was uniquely positioned and shaped compared to the subsequent two cars; the “Monte Carlo bar” or shock-tower lateral brace that was uniquely fabricated by Moore’s team; and an extra pair of longitudinal bars, adjustable by Heim joints, that ran backward toward the rear-axle mounting points to mitigate wheel hop.

“What I bought was the entire roll cage, all of the suspension, the steering system, the rear end, the seat, the instruments, the unique trailing arms and brackets, the spindles, springs, and the brakes. Based on an extensive examination of the roll cage, I knew I had the prototype. It took me nearly a year of negotiating before I could buy it. That was around mid-1998,” says David.

A critical element of the restoration process was finding the components to bring the car as close to original as possible. In 2000, David made contact with Moore, who by then had folded his single-car NASCAR Winston Cup team because he couldn’t land a sponsor. Moore sold most of the Winston Cup equipment to some California partners, who intended to start a NASCAR Winston Cup team. He called Moore and learned that a lot of the Trans-Am gear still remained in his shop.

“I drove there, climbed all around and found, literally, tons of stuff,” David said. “Suspension pieces, brake ducts, doors, (one with the chassis plate), fenders, deck lids, brakes, backing plates, a fuel tank, as well as fuel filler assemblies and many small parts. I also got an original dual-quad, dual-plane intake manifold and the original fiberglass bumpers from another collector. Then, I went to other mechanics in the area who had worked for Bud in those years and found even more stuff. I wanted to restore it with as many original parts as I could find. The last ones, and probably the most difficult to find, were the fiberglass end caps for the front fenders that I located, still in the Bud Moore Engineering colors. I had a pretty big hauler back then and just filled it completely up.”

Despite having a high percentage of the parts in hand, the restoration still consumed some 2,500 hours, with Bill Keefe of Keefe Performance in Phoenix handling most of the body fabrication and paintwork. Other duties were shared by David’s friends Doug Rudy, Jim Lang, Ray Frederick and Dan Miller, who collectively make up his pit crew today.

One significant deviation from original is its current engine. In 1966 and 1967, Ford-branded cars raced the 289-cu.in. small-block V-8 with dual four-barrel Holley carburetors in the Trans-Am series. While Tom still owns a dual-quad 289, the car’s frontline engine for some vintage events is a 302-cu.in. small-block built by Kip Martin Racing Engines in Phoenix. It’s based around a Ford Motorsport 302 block and forged steel crankshaft, and uses Eagle H-beam connecting rods and JE cast-aluminum pistons. It breathes through ported and polished Ford 351W heads. The camshaft, solid lifters and roller rockers are all Crane Cams products. The rotating assembly rides on Clevite 77 bearings. In reality, Ford didn’t begin using the 302 in Trans Am until 1968.

David’s long association with road racing in general, and the Trans-Am in particular, makes him uniquely qualified to provide feedback, even though it has been raced only three times since the restoration was completed. One of the shakedowns took place at Pueblo Motorsports Park in Colorado, which presented its own series of challenges.

“Because of the altitude, we ended up having it set too rich, and the carburetors kept loading up on us,” he said. “On the straight, it was very quick but somewhat darty, but we eventually realized that the drag strip, which also uses the straightaway, had just been used a day or two earlier, so it was still greasy. Turn One at Pueblo is about 270 degrees, and the car tends to understeer going in, but it’s very quick about going back to oversteer even if the car’s loaded up, although in a Trans-Am car, it’s not too bad or violent because at least you know it’s coming.

“This is the only Cougar that Bud put chassis stiffeners in, from the bottom of the cage running back and over the driveshaft tunnel,” David said. “Allegedly, that’s because at a Mid-Ohio test, both Pearson and Gurney said the car wasn’t stiff enough. Now, it’s a very tight car. The chassis is fantastic, and it’s very easy to drive.”

OWNER’S VIEW

David Tom of Apache Junction, Arizona, could already qualify as a renaissance man, given his longtime career as a college administrator, but the variety of his background in American auto racing can only serve to reinforce his status.

“I grew up in Indiana, around dirt track Sprint cars, Indy cars and all that. Then, when I got a little bit of that drag racing thing out of my blood as a teenager, I found out about road racing and started to concentrate on it. I really liked the Can-Am cars, and because I was in a group of people who grew up around muscle cars, I started to follow Trans-Am.

“What made that series so great was that all of the factories were involved, and they wanted world-class drivers, so you had to have the money to hire the best in the business to drive for you. And once you had the best in the business in the series, it tended to attract the best of the rest. That’s why I think that even though Gurney, Parnelli and Mark Donohue were in it, another one with the potential to have been the best was Pearson. “I saw my first Trans-Am race at Donnybrooke Minnesota in 1970, working as a pit fireman, stationed right between the pit boxes of the Chaparral Camaros and the Penske Javelin,” David said. “I became more and more interested in it from then. I guess you could say I’ve been obsessed with it.”

Moore: We would’ve won in ’68

The Sign of the Cat - 1967 Mercury Cougar | The Online Automotive Marketplace | Hemmings (2024)

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