Junkyard Find: 1994 Mercury Cougar XR7 "Prowler"
When the Cougar went from the Fox platform to the MN12 platform for the 1989 model year, it got an independent rear suspension and a longer wheelbase for even more personal luxury. The ’89-97 Cougar had style, and thus the Prowler Edition XR7 makes perfect sense.
Other than a bunch of dudes who have named their Mustang-based early Cougars “Da Prowler” on their websites, a 45-second painstaking Google search doesn’t turn up any reference to Prowler Cougars. The Standard Catalog makes no mention of a factory “Prowler package,” and the Special Edition Cougars site covers only Fox Cougars. Still, the lettering and spoiler look a little too professional to have been done by some guy with gold paint and a suitcase of Milwaukee’s Best; I’m guessing the Prowler XR7 was a dealer-installed setup.
This Cougar landed in a Denver wrecking yard in more or less fully-used-up condition.
Ford didn’t really think the XR7 would be stealing many sales from BMW, IRS or not, but drum brakes on a mid-90s car marketed as being at least somewhat sporty?
Still, it is a Prowler.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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More than any car of this era I remember Cougars having various "special editions" which seemingly consisted of nothing but a tape stripe, possibly some"unique" vinyl top and some name, possibly regional . I remember a "Texas Spesial" living in Texas but I'd see out-of-state Cougars with identcal or equally ugly tape stripes and whatever but called "Tennessee Special" or "California Special" presumably all dealer mark-up items.The Prowler though I think I remember reading about in car magazines of the time as having some sort of performance pretensions.
I could see this Cougar XR7 getting fitted with a custom chassis, a Coyote crate engine, and a custom interior. Cougar XR-7 Prowler SVT anyone?