Meow. I used to own a cat. Rainbow didn't think he was a cat. He thought he was people. I liked Rainbow. He had a cute white stripe on his forehead. But despite his best intentions, I knew Rainbow was still a cat. His habits of barfing up fur balls and attempting to sleep on my head at 5 a.m. betrayed him.
Ford Motor Co. has a new cat. Well, actually, it's Mercury's cat. Its name is Cougar. Mercury has owned cats named Cougar before. Since 1967, apparently. Rumor has it there was a really mean one that lost an ear in a fight.
Mercury's new Cougar is different from the ones before. It's smaller. More agile. More nimble. Quick, you could say. Like a cat is supposed to be. But is it a predatory big cat? Is it fierce? Is it cunning? Is it truly a Cougar?
Introduced in the spring of '98 as a '99 model, the Cougar is based on the Ford Contour platform. As such, about 70 percent of both cars' genes are the same. Give Ford credit-for sharing so much, the Cougar looks totally different. It is deliberately cut, sculpted, and shaped. This technique is obvious on the front end, its headlights and lower air inlets giving off the impression of cat eyes and whiskers. But take a few seconds and look closer. Notice the triangle-shaped door handles and taillights. Notice the body panel gap between the rear bumper and fenders that follows the radius arc of the taillights. Check out the cutouts on the lower parts of the doors that look like they were created by a Ford stylist wielding a giant potato peeler. Function follows form here. It's opposite to, say, a Ferrari F355. A Ferrari's skin flows over its body, the powerful V-8 and big wheels barely contained underneath. Yes, barely contained underneath, like Claire Forlani (Meet Joe Black) under a tight green cashmere sweater. Hmm...
Of course, the Cougar doesn't cost $130,000. Nor does it have breasts, I suppose. You could say it is all contrived, but, ultimately, the styling succeeds in that it makes the Cougar look unique. The cockpit looks good, too. There is more room for rear-seat passengers than in an Integra or Eclipse, as well as more cargo space. After all, it really is a Contour sedan with only two doors. But spending quality time in the cockpit lets the car down a bit. There is a good amount of hard plastic here, and the seats look more supportive than they really are. Additional quibbles included door-release handles that are not designed as well as they should be, roof-mounted warning lights not placed where you expect them, and a shifter that blocks some of the radio preset buttons while in First, Third, or Fifth.
That standard-issue Ford shifter is connected to a four-cylinder Zetec engine or, in our test car's case, a Duratec 24-valve 2.5L V-6. It produces 170 hp at 6,250 rpm and 165 lb-ft at 4,250. Those numbers reverberate sweetly in our collective ear, and so does the engine. It growls, it revs, and it actually sounds a bit feline. There's torque here, thank you, and it does a nice job of pulling the Cougar safely through city streets clogged with stupid SUV drivers talking on their cell phones.
Getting out of gridlock and into twisty terrain poses some problems for the Cougar. First, there's no redline markings on the 8,000 rpm tach. So our first attempts at full-throttle acceleration ended with the needle bouncing off the ECU's preset rev limiter. Not the best way to accelerate, mind you. Watching the speedo needle isn't encouraging during acceleration, either. The Cougar sounds faster than it really is. Zero-60 burps up in 7.6 seconds. That's decent, mind you, but it seems slower than what the Cougar's looks, manual shifter, and V-6 promise. Turning off the traction control made no difference. So, perhaps the culprit is a curb weight of around 2,900 pounds-only about 30 pounds less than a V-6 Contour.