"The Gentleman's Car"

In 1982, when Chris Jones turned 16 years old, he inherited his brother’s 1968 Mercury Cougar. The vehicle was originally bought and sold at the Miami-Dade Lincoln Mercury dealership in Florida by Jones’ uncle.
“So, it was a love affair that started a long, long time ago,” Jones chuckled. “I got bit [by the Cougar bug] young and I’ve always enjoyed them.”
These days, Jones is the proud owner of a 1969 Cougar convertible, known as a “Standard Cougar.” During his 40-year admiration for the Cougar, he has collected and restored around 20 vehicles himself.

“When you look at muscle cars in general, the Chevrolet Camaro and the Ford Mustang are the very popular ones, but those were made at a ratio of roughly four or five to one compared to the Cougar,” Jones noted.
As the founder of the Southeast Cougar Club — an organization that “celebrates the classic muscle car years of the Mercury Cougar” in North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama — Jones oversees a passionate group of automobile enthusiasts who adore the Cougar for a myriad of reasons, from an array of backgrounds and so on. To note, the national chapter, the Cougar Club of America, has been around since 1980.

“What kind of holds the Cougar community together is that we’re a small, tight-knit group,” Jones said. “So, because so few [Cougars] were made, there’s not a lot of us out there. Because of that, and because of the uniqueness of the car, you have to develop friendships in order to acquire because there’s quite a few unique features about it.”

The SCC will host a special car show at the Haywood County Fair  from
10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 26. So, why Haywood County? Well, even though Jones currently calls Georgia home, he’s planning on relocating to Western North Carolina in the coming years to be closer to family. And this year’s showcase is also a test run of sorts for the SCC in
preparation for a potentially bigger show at Smoky Mountain Event Center, the Cougar’s 60th anniversary of its inception in April 2027.

From 1967 to 2002, the Mercury Cougar was second only to the Grand Marquis in terms of its longevity on the production line. The Cougar was also regarded as “The Gentleman’s Car,” where it was seen by many to have more of a European flare compared to its contemporaries of the time. According to Jones, the Cougar was aimed “to compete with the Jaguar and some of the foreign cars that were coming in.” On the luxury editions of the Cougar, there were upgraded features offered like leather seats and faux wood trim, attributes that, at the time, reflected a more refined European style.

​

“Obviously [nowadays] it’s an almost 60-year-old car, so it doesn’t provide all the creature comforts that a newer vehicle does today,” Jones said. “To me, it’s like you’re driving an old boat or an old airplane, where it hearkens back to a time and age where things were simpler.”

Jones pointed out how, in the old days of the Cougar in the 1960s and 1970s, it was common practice for a consumer to walk into a dealership, sit down with the salesperson and go item- by-item on the order list and build your own vehicle to your exact specifications.

“America has a love affair with the automobile, more so than almost any other country on the planet,” Jones said. “And back then, no two cars looked the same — the Cougars were, in their own sense, a very unique vehicle.”