Ringbrothers Built a Gorgeous, Coyote-Powered '68 Mercury Cougar
Brothers Jim and Mike Ring have made a name for themselves with outrageous custom muscle cars. Just check out their 1000-hp AMC Javelin, 700-hp '68 Mustang Mach 1, 980-hp Chevelle, ATS-V powered '48 Cadillac coupe, or, yes, their 900-hp Winnebago. So it's safe to say the latest creation out of their Spring Green, WI shop is a little out of the ordinary. Meaning, it only makes 460 horsepower.
Know what? That's fine by us. This gorgeous 1968 Mercury Cougar is the perfect antidote to restomod muscle car one-upsmanship. And it's exactly what a Cougar should be.
See, the Cougar was always the more grown-up and stylish sibling to the Mustang. The Ford coupe has always been aimed at the young and the restless (reckless, maybe?). The Cougar, back when it shared mechanicals with the Mustang, was how you got pony car performance in a shirt and tie. Aggressive but restrained. Athletic, but refined.
And the latest Ringbrothers build nails that balance.
Under the hood is the beating heart of every modern Mustang: Ford's 5.0-liter Coyote V-8, here pumping out 460 hp. DSE performance suspension, modern brakes, and HRE three-piece forged wheels bring the chassis up to the task of handling that 21st-century power.
If we're being picky here, there's only one misstep, and it's a minor one. Because Ringbrothers fitted this Cougar with the 10-speed paddle-shift automatic transmission from a current F-150 Raptor, they were forced to use the modern truck's shift lever. It's a big, bulky hunk of black plastic that disrupts the otherwise gorgeous peanut-butter interior. It's hard to fault the guys here: Modern computer-controlled automatic transmissions don't offer many options for custom shift levers, particularly when they include upshift/downshift buttons right on the knob like Ford does. These aren't the old days, where your slushbox shift knob screwed onto a metal rod that shot straight down into the transmission case and anything with the proper threads could be your alternate shift knob.
Nitpicks aside, this is a fantastic piece of custom work. Under normal circumstances, the Cougar would have made its debut at SEMA. We're just glad to see it, even if virtually.
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