Custom Cougar (1968)

The Custom Cougar was a Hot Wheels casting designed by Harry Bradley based on the the 1967 Mercury Cougar. It debuted in the 1968 Basic Car line as part of the Original 16 castings. Every version of the car had a die-cast body, die-cast chassis, redline wheels, bent-axle suspension, and Spectraflame paint. The casting was originally available in only two colors, Spectraflame Blue and Spectraflame Orange. Subsequent releases expanded the colors.

Like many of the other original 16, The Custom Cougar had details in the first run that were left off in subsequent runs. For the Cougar it was the painted grill "teeth". The little dividers between the grill was painted the same as the body color. Since this only happened on the early runs, this feature was only on the Blue and Orange colored cars.

Also early run cars had color-keyed interiors. The Blue Cougar with a blue interior is fairly common. Later issues find it with any of the other assorted color interiors.

Black roofs are found on the Cougars, also. Some colors are found quite often with the "vinyl" top while other colors are more rarely found. The Olive Cougar is one that commonly has the black roof.

Versions
The Custom Cougar has come out in the following versions:

Similar castings
In 2002, a new Custom Cougar casting was created by Mark Jones. It was based on a different vehicle model year and was more of a tuner style version of the Mercury Cougar.