[AUTOMATIC CAPTIONS BY YOUTUBE®] today let's go for a ride as we see if I can turn this thousand-pound lemon into
this million pound a retro supercar no you're too young to drive
oh hello chip dippers welcome to retro recipes now here in the channel I
certainly cover a lot of retro computing stuff from my full-size Lego commodore
64 to c64 minis inside full sized ones but occasionally we like to drive a
little off menu as is the case today so think back to 1999 President Clinton is
acquitted the matrix is released but more importantly we're all playing with
the Sega Dreamcast the Sony Playstation and the Nintendo 64 Double D but I had
my eye on something else although I couldn't afford it at the time I loved
the styling of the Ford Cougar I think it was something about that unusual
American coupe a design to my British eyes and I just fell in love as did
Jeremy Clarkson and here it is the Cougar
who for some reason was at Downton Abbey
whoever designed this car put some real effort into it
it's huge fun to drive and although this won't be the end result of our project
is still important to have a quick look at what we're basing things on well I
just can't think of any car that gets it better it's brilliant
it was even the subject of a cleverly edited Dennis Hopper commercial
I walked on the plane at Terminal 3 trying to fly through the night
Cougar? this should have called it the Ford big angry lion
all right well I think it's time to say thanks and goodbye to Jeremy and leave
him and his analogies at Downton Abbey what do we want race car noises when do we want them neowww
the Cougar brand had actually been around since 1967 under Ford's luxury
mercury branding and it was quite a daring thing to bring to Europe in 1999
for still the cooter is the best-selling mercury vehicle of all time shifting
nearly 3 million units and the rebadged Ford version for the European markets is
almost identical except for some reason they replaced the American cup holder
with a pen holder so fast-forwarding many years and I was bringing it on
DuckDuckGo when I came across this
cute Top Gear style editing
Kouga yes I should have called it big angry lion s get it this is the
one-of-a-kind 1999 Mercury Cougar s performance concept while Christie's
Auction House described as an impressive aggressive package that would have made
the Cougar s one of the hottest pieces of equipment that it made it into
production its exterior is a no-holds-barred performance package
highlighted by the large rectangular air intake in the front and although is
based on the standard Cougars chassis there's distinctively flared wheel
fenders have been added using fiberglass to house 18-inch specially built
two-piece six spoke alloy wheels on the top a functional hood scoop feeds cold
air to the v6 engine most of the rear that integrated twin exhaust flights by
rectangular air vents continues the front air dam themed and under the hood
is a three liter v6 engine making 210 horsepower compared with the standard
Cougars not too shabby two and a half liter v6 170 brake
horsepower this thing absolutely flies 20 years after its introduction the
Cougar S concept remains a timely expression of the trend towards hot
sports coupe ace and there's only one more detail to add I want it I wish this
was my car and I was able to track down the new owner the christie's sold it to
no not Jeremy Clarkson so let's drop him a quick email see how much he might sell
it to us for you've got mail Wow the million pounds well now that I've picked
my jaw up from the other side of the world let's bring back into action with
a plan B see instead of paying a million pounds I think we should be able to pay
homage to what the Ford engineers did with an approximation of those five
atlast parts by way of a body kit in that way we can build off Cougar S
imitation but to keep the forward copyright lawyers happy it won't be an
exact replicas Thanks love you food talking of
keeping people happy hey babe yeah I've got something to tell
you I've fallen in love with an old cougar
and I want us to pay to give her a facelift you talking about a car or else
but you condoned me sleeping with the Cougar
I mean so you caught a nice boot you sure she doesn't have a truck
so let's scour the second-hand market for a suitable old cougar to fix up and
I soon found this for a thousand pounds now all of these cars are over 20 years
old and this one certainly has some issues but the exterior is the least of
our worries you know it really coins my gears clutch
failure in all seriousness though what has four wheels and flies a garbage
truck flies yeah well speaking of garbage the amount of work we have to do
to this car but before long we have a roadworthy car to start as our basis for
the Cougar s
before we start I should point out the PCB way are absolutely terrible at
installing car body kits but if you need a new pcp then I recommend PCB way they
can help you out with PCBs for any car hacks or upgrades that you may need
because as we all know PCP stands for Perry fact --ax Cougar OD kit doesn't it
well with that said it's time to take our Cougar to the body shop and get to
work
so the first thing we need to do is start stripping this old cougar down and
take off all the parts that were going to modify
and I mentioned the Cougar s is no-holds-barred well this is all holes
bored is patch up any bodywork issues so this thing looks a mint and because
we're gonna respray the car with an exact cut with an imitation color match
to the Cougar s we sand down the whole car ready for priming I should mention
this body shop is called the twisted vision and literally the day I gave them
their final payment they went out of business
rest in peace twisted vision and that being the case this may make our
imitation another one of a kind now they say Red Bull gives you wings
but in our case it's black fiberglass yeah some people much cleverer than me
use their artistic skills to create this well if they're not as clever as puppy
practic I think she likes our cougar cat now as well as those flared wheel arches
giving it that cat-like stance it also has this trim along the base and the
original doesn't so let's grind down the bodywork ready to fix fiberglass pieces
for those too
so the pieces in place and the paint work primed for this one problem I don't
know the color so I reached out to the concepts owner you super helpful and
finally I settled on this Aston Martin tungsten silver let's spray it looks
right let's pray Prince Burton in mind
and we mustn't forget our air intake on the bonnet hood this is created by just
simply cutting a rectangle out of the existing hood on it adding the
fiberglass piece then using body filler to smooth it into shape and installed
and sprayed things are really starting to take shape but there's one more thing
the wheels how do we get from this to these studded beauties and I've actually
found the ones Ford used they're made by a company called American wheels makes
sense and they only cost four and a half thousand dollars yeah I think I'll pass
but I did find a pretty close match blends o RS fives as you can see they
don't look out of place at all in fact I think they're really good sorry cut me
right up we'll finish everything off and see if our project really does have
wheels
well this is all really taking shape but there's a couple of bits of housekeeping
still left as you can see here I still have the old cougar logo and text but we
needed to look like this well three bay to the rescue again for
eight bucks and Ford parts UK were able to help with the letter yes so let's get
sticky
now before the big reveal let's look quickly at the interior this is the
Cougar s interior and it has a few kind of silvered finishes but really nothing
different in fact our cougar is more modern
hence the snazziest steering wheel but I did want to bring things a little bit up
to date and I found this TomTom on eBay I chose this model because it lets you
change the start screen and the icon for the car so what we can do is create this
little icon with a red background and it will superimpose it on to the map
super
and one final final thing to really put uh projects on the map is the engine now
Christie said they were unable to ascertain whether this really is three
liter engine or if it had just been rebadged I did ask the new owner and he
said he'd put it up on Jack's and it did look like a special engine the funny
thing is when I ran the VIN number it just shows as a standard 2.5 liter
who knows if that was good enough for Jezza I think it's good enough for us
well if you've got any common sense at all you'll take the Ford and that's
exactly what we did we took a Ford from this turn this
well we've been on quite a ride together do you think it looks as good as the
original concept car well in case you don't I have a confession to me I played
a small trick on you earlier remember when I said this before the reverb and
there's only one more detail to add I wanted I wish this was my car well
actually that photo is my car I snuck in some after photos to the before sequence
I loaded the original promotional shot supplied by Ford into Photoshop and then
cut out this picture of my car and pasted it in sorry about that
if you didn't notice then I guess we did an okay job photo shops also handy for
license plates and on that bombshell it's time to hit the road but I'll be
back very soon with the most standard retro recipes
until then thanks for watching subscribe below and cheerio
the v6 engines an absolute Barnstormer as well there's a sort of muted roar
when you get to the top of the rev range