1977 Mercury Cougar Villager Brougham

400 V8 and looks like all options except factory gauges. Rare and desirable Cougar wagon, but showing a lot of flaws for that price.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1977-Mercu...on-/332563676448?_trksid=p2141725.m3641.l6368

 

I always wondered about the idea behind offering the Cougar as a station wagon. The Cougar, to me at least, was like the Thunderbird, Mustang, Camaro, Toronado, Riviera, Monte Carlo, Grand Prix, and others. All of them personal sport or luxury cars offered as coupes and, in some cases, convertibles. But not station wagons!

It's interesting that the ad says the car is in Kentucky, but it has a Hawaii license plate. Did it come originally from Hawaii? That's quite an undertaking to bring a car from there to the mainland.

He says the car was Ziebarted when new. Would you have put Ziebart rustproofing on a car purchased in Hawaii? I doubt there are any Ziebart services there to do it.

 

He might have been stationed on a Hawaiian base. Depending on how near the vehicle was to the coast, rustproofing would have helped in slowing down rust caused by sea spray

 

I thought we had seen this one before. Sold on eBay for $1500 in 2015. Was in Colorado at the time.

http://www.stationwagonforums.com/forums/threads/1977-mercury-cougar-villager-brougham.36761/

 

Since when did they have speedometers showing both measurements? Could this have been originally bought new in Canada?

 

At the time the 4-doors and wagons got the 'Cougar' name, they were all named 'Montego'. This was just an attempt to capture more sales. Smart move, I would say.

Hawaii is a VERY moist climate. When I first visited there in 1986, I had not thought about the issue prior, and was shocked at the number of very rusty vehicles - and a lot of them were only a few years old. Salt air is very hard on car bodies and frames. And there's no 'safe place' on any of the islands. You would have to wash (and dry) your car, all over, to keep the rust bugs at bay. Ziebarting might help the undercarriage. I wouldn't be surprised if there were outlets there in some places....

 

Stationed on a navy base and moved around enough to have a car registered in Hawaii but actually spent 95% of its time on the mainland. You see Hawaiian plates all over San Diego and Seattle with its large military presence.

The dual readout speedometers started in the mid '70s on most carlines: by 1975 GM's big cars were doing it and the F-body as well. Just made sense to do it, the cars couldn't be expected to never leave the US and made importing to another country easier after the fact.

 

True, was a 70's thing when Canada went metric. Easy to tell a US car compared to Canada, USA cars would have the MPH highlighted on the speedo and in miles on the odometer, and visa versa in Canada. Trucks though after a 1 ton ratting had a weird loop hole. US built 1 ton+ chassis came to Canada built in the US still only had MPH, no kilometer on the dash. I have a 76 USA built Ford Econoline 350 chassis under my Canadian built C-Class RV that is only in MPH etc. Yet years before 76 any passenger car in Canada read both with exception of odometer, Canada would be in kilometers.

 

Depends on your point of view, really. A lot of Cougar fans found dropping the Montego name and applying "Cougar" to the entire line of mid-sized cars (especially a line that included station wagons, as wagons were very uncool to sports car snobs and sophisticate wannabes) to be demeaning to the Cougar nameplate. Of course, they probably weren't happy when Mercury moved the name from their ponycar to their personal luxury intermediate in '74.

It's totally understandable, of course. Cougar was a winner for Mercury and they milked it for all it was worth. But, not unlike Oldsmobile when they put the "Cutlass" moniker on so many different models, it did -- in my view at least -- dilute the Cougar name's "specialness" to apply it to an entire line of cars. Not because it included wagons, just because it was a full line. Think how Mustang lovers would have reacted if Ford had dropped the Fairlane and/or Torino names and called all their intermediates Mustang.

 

My '76 Montego was made in Ohio for the Canadian market (no catalytic converter), and it reads only miles & mph. In fact, when I got it, there were stickers near the speedometer for kph.

Interestingly, I have 3 full-sized FoMoCo wagons that were built in Oakville, Canada for the U.S. market.

 

They did weird things back then.........

......The Metoer , a "Canadian only model" for 99%" Last Canadian only Meteor based on a no frills Marquis was 1979 if I remember. A Canada only model, last year of production they were all built in the USA and exported

 

It wouldn't have been so bad, if the Cougar badge was applied to other intermediates offering exclusively the largest engine available, bucket seats, console and a guage package, with the exception of sedan models

 

transport from San Diego to Hawaii is only about $650; a ferry leaves about once a week; not truly covered but cheap

 

If he's stationed in Hawaii, he shouldn't have to pay anything, for shipping it there

 

My 77 colony park is a Canadian car. Odometer and speedometer in miles with kilometres on the Speedo being smaller numbers below the mph ones. Original single exhaust, dual cats and 460 engine. I think 77 was the year we changed over to metric here but it took some manufacturer's a bit to get rid of old inventories.