Badge engineering is an old and familiar story in the Motor City. Here’s a textbook example: the Mercury Bobcat.

When the 1971 Pinto, Ford’s first subcompact for the U.S. market, sold more than 350,000 units in its first year, it virtually guaranteed that a Mercury version would appear at some point. It was the Ford way, the Motor City way. And so it did in 1974, when a barely disguised Pinto called the Bobcat was introduced in Canada. However, this Bobcat had only a slightly different grille and bright metal headlamp surrounds to distinguish it from the Pinto. The U.S. model launched in the following year was a somewhat more elaborate production.

For American buyers, the domestic ’75 Bobcat featured a taller hood and a prominent, classically-styled grille to align it with the rest of the Lincoln-Mercury product line. While no one was officially credited for the grille, the fingerprints of Ford product chief Lee Iacocca are all over it. Vinyl roofs, opera windows, and classic grilles were his stock in trade. Years later, fellow Ford and Chrysler veteran Bob Lutz would mockingly refer to Iacocca’s favorite styling gimmick as the “Greek temple grille.”

Other Bobcat features included larger tail lamps, bright headlamp surrounds, and an upgraded interior, but beyond that the Bobcat was pretty much a Pinto. Pricing for ’75 started at $3,189, $205 more than an otherwise comparable Pinto three-door hatchback. For 1976, the Bobcat was briefly rebranded as the Bobcat MPG, working the fuel economy angle.

While the Pinto was available in a price-leader coupe with a fixed hatch, the Bobcat was initially offered in just two body styles, the three-door hatchback Runabout and the Villager station wagon. Later, the wagon the would be split into multiple trim levels, Wagon and Villager. Wagons were typically were a larger portion of the sales mix for the Bobcat than they were over on the Pinto side. Lincoln-Mercury marketing for the Bobcat appeared to place a special focus on the wagons over the hatchback, but we can’t say if that was cause or effect. Like Ford, Mercury didn’t offer a wagon in its other smaller cars, the Comet and Monarch.

With few exceptions, options, appearance packages, and rear-drive powertrain choices for the Bobcat tracked along with the Pinto. Standard was a 2.3 liter (140 CID) inline four, while a 2.8 liter V6 (170.8 CID) was optional, but available only with an automatic transmission. In 1979, the Greek temple grille disappeared in favor of a more contemporary front end treatment (above), and the V6 was dropped.

Naturally, in the six years of Bobcat production, sales never began to approach those of the Pinto. They trailed along at around the 30,000 to 40,000 level, roughly in proportion to Ford versus Mercury volume. After 1980, the Bobcat was discontinued to make way for the front-wheel drive Lynx, a rebranded Ford Escort.