Mercury called the 1968 Cougar “the better idea in luxury sports cars.” See and hear all about the ’68 Cougar lineup in this original Ford dealer film. 

With the introduction of the 1967 Cougar, Ford’s Mercury division scored a solid win for the mid-priced brand. (See our feature on the ’67 Cougar here.) While the Cougar was closely based on the popular Ford Mustang platform, the luxury-flavored pony car sported a number of upmarket features,  including hideaway headlamps, sequential taillamps, and standard V8 power, allowing a generous markup and, presumably, a healthy profit. For ’68, Mercury made only minimal adjustments to this winning formula, as seen in this original Mercury dealer film.

As a side note, we note the Cougar nameplate soon became something of an evergreen for the Mercury division—in a similar way as the Cutlass name at Oldsmobile, if you will  To leverage its selling power, the Cougar badge was applied to a wide range of Mercury products over the years, from station wagons to front wheel-drive coupes, all the way through 2002.

The star of our dealer film is a new model for ’68, the GT-E, a much rarer car than its appearance here may suggest. The experts say only 393 examples of these brutes were built, including 356 cars with 427 side-oiler power and 37 with the 428 Cobra Jet V8, which was introduced at  mid-year. Naturally, with either engine the GT-E is  celebrated today as one of the most rare and desirable Mercurys of the muscle car epoch. Video below.