Photo Credit: Latvian98

My first car, in the late 1970s, was a ten-year old 1969 Mercury Cougar, a family car that used to belong to my dad. Low-slung and powerful, it was fun to drive in a different way from most cars today; there was a sense that it had an energy and initiative of its own that you were barely keeping under control.

I drove it for two years (until it finally gave up the ghost), but I never forgot it. And twenty years later, when I bought my first (and only) new car from a dealer, it was one of the redesigned Mercury Cougars that came out in 1999. It was a totally new car, but like the original, it was low-slung and powerful, with a purr that betrayed a powerful engine barely under control, and I had more fun driving it than anything before or since.

Rich