Freddie Cougar
My name is Tim McCain, and this is my on again-off again project;
This will be a long, meandering boring story for most of you, so here is the short version;
This is my first car, It is a 1969 XR-7 with the 320hp 390, C-6, Front disc brakes, and leather. I bought it when I was 16. Drove the wheels off it, raced it, wrecked it once. Along the way, I learned a lot working on it. I drove it to school, made my first pass ever down a dragstrip in it. Entered it in car shows, bracket raced it, painted it twice. Bought 3 other Cougars that came and went (including an Eliminator) Fast forward to today, I am finally starting to work on it after it has been sitting for the better part of 12 years. It will be getting a roller 428, DFI, and an AOD. I am going to be doing a lot of subtle body mods. I am guessing it will take about 3 years to complete. (wife, 2 kids, etc) but I am ecstatic just to be working on it.
Long version;
My name is Tim McCain. I come from a very Ford-centric family. My grandfather (first name Ford, by the way) collected and restored 2-seat T-birds. There were 9 classics in the family at one time, and we still have a couple of those. My mother bought her 1965, 289, 4-Barrel 4-Speed Mustang new, and still has it. Her daily driver is an ‘06 Mustang GT 5-speed car, unless it is rainy, then she drives her AWD Saleen Explorer. She learned to drive on a 55 Lincoln Capri (we still have that one as well) My wife and I drove away from our wedding in a 56 T-Bird (now mine!)
I spent a lot of time going to car shows with my grandparents, as he was heavily involved in CTCI (Classic Thunderbird Club International) and went to numerous shows around the country every summer. I loved looking at those cars, and loved the idea of driving my mom’s 65. I was into drawing cars, and I drew Mustangs constantly, and really, desperately wanted a fastback.
My grandfather agreed to help me find and buy a car, so I started looking at a lot of Mustangs. My standards were way higher than my budget would allow, and I kept being disappointed in what I could find in my price range. Finally I thought I had found one that I could afford. I set up an appointment with my grandfather to meet at the lot where the car was. When I arrived at the lot “$1,995” was really “7,995” (typo, they said. More like bait and switch, or something like that) so I was dead in the water, and actually left before he showed up. I got a call later from my mom, saying that Grandpa had looked around the lot, and there was a Cougar there that he felt I should take a look at. For some reason, I remember my response clearly “ I wouldn’t mind a Cougar, but green? I don’t know”
I went to the dealer out of respect for my grandfather, and liked the car a lot, especially when we opened the hood and saw the chrome valve covers and the 390 decal on the air cleaner. We negotiated a price, and made arrangements for me to pay him back. If I remember correctly, I had some of the money, he had most, and I was to pay him back. I believe that did not work out exactly as arranged, and he paid for most of it.
I was very excited, and couldn’t wait to drive it to school ( I was a junior in high school) for a variety of reasons, probably the biggest at the time was that I wanted to show it to a girl I had a huge crush on whose parents bought her a 66 Chevelle a week earlier. No dice. It would be 6 months before I got to drive it.
My grandfather was a very particular guy, used to doing concours restorations. He went over it with a fine-tooth comb and made a list of everything that needed to be dealt with. The motor was rebuilt, it received an NOS rear valence, a broken tail light was fixed, etc. I still have the list. All four handwritten pages of it. This took way too long for a 16 year old, but I really had no choice. He was the man, and I had to live by his rules. When I finally got to drive it, I made some of the basic modifications, more chrome, a stereo, etc. I found 4 Cougar rally wheels in the local junkyard, miraculously enough, and paid $100 for the set. They are currently for sale if you know anyone….
I went to the high school drags my senior year with a friend, and was totally hooked.
(I have a picture of that pass, it is the one included here, believe it or not!) and the drag race obsession was started.
I ended up hanging out at the local speed shop (Honest Performance in Federal Way Washington) enough that they finally put me to work. While I worked there, the car kind of evolved through some phases. It had a tri-power for a while, a million different Holleys, nitrous, multiple sets of headers, who knows what else. I entered it in shows as well as bracket races, and did OK in both. It won the “street driven” class in a couple of shows, and I won a few races with it, including one where I cut two .000 lights in one day! The best ET I ever coaxed out of it was 12.88 at 106, not bad for a 3800 pound car on street tires, pump gas, and no nitrous. Remember this was early 90’s, that was fairly fast for the time!
For whatever reason, the car kind of deteriorated. I started projects that I didn’t have the money to finish, or got in over my head, didn’t have a clear plan, whatever. It was in pieces for a long time, and I moved twice while it was apart. I was bitching about how difficult it was, and what a nightmare it was, when my co-worker said “nightmare? It’s like Freddie Cougar, right” and my car was stuck with a name. Nearly 20 years later, it’s still Freddie.
I have a plan now, as you can see by the artwork. I have “built” every inch of the car in my head. Go ahead, ask me about any part of the car, I know what it is going to look like! I want my car to “feel” like Hurricane, the Troy-built Biscayne. I want it to “feel” like a high horsepower street rod, if that makes sense. My wife is very supportive, and really wants me to be happy with the car, so she is encouraging me to do nothing short of everything I really want the car to be. She only has one requirement, and that is that I can throw her the keys, and she can drive it without a tutorial. One thing that is etched in stone is the Rushforth wheels. I count Jason as one of my closest friends and love him like a brother, so I really have no choice, even if I didn’t love his designs!
The rendering is self explanatory, I guess. (my scanner kind of "squished" it, but you get the idea)
The Black and white picture is literally the day I bought it in 1984.
The dragstrip photo is SIR in 1985, my first pass ever down the strip!
The mall photo is a Mustangs Northwest show in Northgate mall sometime in the late 1980's
More will be coming soon, if anyone cares!
Last edited by FreddieCougar; 05-28-2009 at 06:51 PM.
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