1967 Cougar Trans Am Tribute

[propayne]

You are always welcome Dave!

- Phillip

[honker]

propayne, great photo of the Cougar (new one to me, thanks !) weren't those called "Baby Grands" ? Is that Seiichi Suzuki driving ,

what was his link to Bud Moore, and or Shelby ? ? here's another shot of him at Daytona in '68, he also ran what I think was a '69

Cougar in the same series.

Mike

[propayne]

Hey honker -

Seems that the magazines of the day labelled the new for '68 NASCAR series "Baby Grands", but I have since been told by the son of one of the drivers that that nickname wasn't particularly liked at the time.

The series was officially launched in 1968 and was called the Grand Touring Division. It was basically NASCAR's version of the Trans-Am series. The name was changed in 1970 to the Grand American Series.

NASCAR held kind of a trail run in 1967 with the Paul Revere 250 at Daytona International Speedway. It appears that basically all of the '67 Trans-Am cars ran a non-points race that started at midnight on July 4th and lasting until 2:30 in the morning. Parnelli Jone's brought his Bud Moore Cougar in first followed by Jerry Titus's Shelby Mustang. Bob Johnson was third in a Mustang and Peter Revson was fourth in another BME Cougar.

You'll see it quoted often that PJ never won a race in his Bud Moore Cougar, which strictly is not true. Shame it was a "non-points" race, Cougar might have won the TA championship with those points.

When Ford pulled the plug on the Trans-Am Cougars for 1968 Bud Moore took the Cougars into the Grand Touring Division, with DeWayne "Tiny" Lund being his main driver. Moore rotated drivers in the other Cougars including Suzuki for a couple of races. Other notable drivers who drove the Cougars for Bud include Swede Savage and Lloyd Ruby (who won the 1968 Paul Revere 250 in his Cougar).

Bud sold off his Cougars in 1969 to "Tiger" Tom Pistone and Reid Shaw.

There are also photos of Suzuki racing a Cougar later, with '70 sheet metal. Maybe the Pistone Cougar with new body panels hung on it (?).

Some posted this link to info on Suzuki - can't remember if was this forum or another.

Sadly, he was killed in a race in the early '70s.

http://www.motorsportmemorial.org/focus.php?db=ct&n=942&fbclid=IwAR0i37ZItLmWhzYqnv7RQvEm7uXA7lUXHkD_4nqSnfE9xMXbd5284EXx8WU

- Phillip

[Tom Honegger]

The tribute car is very nice, but it doesn't really look like it
is lowered much. Love the ride height of the Bud Moore Cougars!

[gt350hr]

 Phillip,
    Not trying to step on your toes but the Bud Moore engine build sheets and balance cards say "the one Tiny got" and the ones "Reid got". Tom probably got Tiny's car. Bud (rip) and Gregg eluded to me that there were at least 5 cars built "in the day". When the cars were switched to dirt track use they suffered the ( as expected) rough use and became difficult to recognize.
   Since you have become THE historian ( IMHO anyway) for Cougar racers , I will begin sorting all of the pertinent BME Paper work given to me long before Bud's passing and work a deal out with you to own it ( Cougar wise). The information allows you to see how difficult the task was to win a race with what they had to work with. Give me some time because there are MANY sheets to sort from .
    Randy

[propayne]

Hey there Randy -

Please don't worry about my toes!! I'm here to learn and hopefully add to the knowledge base a little bit if I can.

I'm humbled to be called any kind of an expert. I am sure my story is familiar to a lot of us - you start off wanting to satisfy your own curiosity, one thing leads to another and then before you know it you've got an attic full of old racing programs and newspapers and magazines!!

Along with those I've talked with several drivers who are still around and their family members. I was very lucky to get to meet Bud a couple of times before he passed.

Near as I can tell and according to the info we have so far it looks like BME built (or had a hand in building, in the case of the first "mule" car) 4 Mercury Cougars for the 1967 Trans-Am season and then at least one more for the 1968 Grand Touring Division - so yes, 5 racing Cougars in all.

Bud sold one Cougar (the mule) at the end of the '67 TA season that stayed in that series and was wrecked badly at the 1968 Sebring TA race. The other 3 became NASCAR Grand Touring Division race cars plus Bud built another NASCAR Cougar.

Tiny/BME won the championship that year and then Tiger Tom bought that Cougar and Tiny drove it again for the '69 season. By the 1969 Paul Revere 250 that Cougar had '69 sheetmetal.

Reid Shaw bought a Cougar from Bud in April of '69 and then a second one around Sept. of '69. It looks like one was an ex Trans-Am Cougar and the other was a dedicated NASCAR Cougar. One of those may have been the cream colored Cougar that was raced by "Little" Bud Moore (no relation).

I think the Pistone Cougar was given 1970 Cougar sheetmetal, painted blue and ended up in his boneyard.

Shaw put '70 sheetmetal on one of his Cougars (at the insistence of Mercury who provided Shaw with new body panels) with the other Cougar retaining it's '67/'68 body.

In the 1971 Citrus 250 program there is a photo of Randy Banister racing a '67/'68 Cougar whose trunk lid looks like one of the notched Trans-Am Cougar trunk lids (one of the Shaw Racing Enterprises Cougars?).

There is of course other racing Cougars like the one C.B. Gwyn built from a wrecked production Cougar with the help of Holman & Moody.

So that kind of sums it up - it looks like the Bannister Cougar might still be out there somewhere and could be an ex Trans-Am Cougar.

I think the Gwyn Cougar is still around also.

- Phillip

[CSX 4133]

This site is dedicated to the early Trans Am cars. There is a lot of information, if you click on the pictures of individual cars it gives a little history, prior driver/owner and current owner. There are three '67 Cougars listed that run in SVRA's Trans Am series, there may be others I'm not aware of.


http://www.historictransam.com/cars.html

[gt350hr]

   Well aware of the site , thank you.

    Phillip,
       The "number" I heard was 5 in total as well.  Now I see the connection to Tom P as there is no mention of him in any of the BME stuff I have. Looks like they had a "pool" of about 12 engines for the 5 cars according to the papers I have.
    Randy

[propayne]

I'm sure you're already aware of all of this, but the VINs are known for the "mule" Cougar and the Pistone/Lund Cougar and interestingly the Pistone Cougar started life as an S code 390 4v car.

The "mule" Cougar was a A code 289 4v car that had already had some race modifications done before Bud Moore got involved.

The excellent "Kar-Kraft" book by Charlie Henry states that KK's lead Trans-Am engineer has said that KK didn't have anything to do with the TA Cougars other than make some suspension recommendations at Fran Hernandez's request - so it has been speculated that the initial mods to that first TA Cougar were done at Dearborn Steel and Tubing.

If anyone can shed any light on that that would be great.

- Phillip

[honker]

Phillip,  here's a bit about DST and the Moore '67 Cougars, this is from the David Tom book "The Cars Of Trans-Am Racing 1966-

1972" there is quite a bit there about the '67 Moore Cougar program. There are a number of pages in the "Bud Moore" book by

Dr. John A. Craft on this program as well. I have both these books, if you want I could scan the relevant pages and get them to

you, for me it would be easier to just make hard copies and mail them to you, It's to involved scanning and sizing to the computer,

then posting on the forum for an old fart like me    pm me off the forum if you're interested.

Mike

PS: Thanks for your informative replies regarding the Moore Cougars in the Grand Touring Division in '68.  I also have the Kar-Kraft

book.

[propayne]

Hey there Mike -

I have the David Tom book and the Bud Moore book, thanks so much for the offer!

I really appreciate everyone's patience with me on this forum regarding Cougar stuff 

As I've said many times, these cars were all designed, engineered, built, sold and raced by many of the same people so you can really learn quite a lot by being open minded and looking at the big picture.

I actually did the decals for David Tom's Cougar also! Last I heard it was in the Larry Miller Museum.

- Phillip

[roddster]

  I'd like to see the #17 Cougar's tail.  Looking to see how the tail spoiler looks

[JD]

There are a number of good images of the '67 Cougars (and others too) that raced in the TransAm series in the Chapter covering the 1967 season in the book by Dave Friedman (the "Shelby" Photographer)

"Trans-Am - the Pony Car Wars 1966-1972", which some of you are probably already aware of.

[propayne]

^^^ great book and a must for vintage Trans-Am fans.

Here is a closeup of the spoiler on my friend's TA Cougar that he just sold.

And also, here is a vintage photo from A.O. Smith of a Cougar with a prototype spoiler. They were considering including that as a part of the XR7-G package.

- Phillip

[roddster]

  Cool as  I thougt it would be.  Thanks.