A Two-Owner 1967 Mercury Cougar With a Four-Speed Manual Has Just Surfaced — and It’s Rarer Than You Think

A genuine two-owner 1967 Mercury Cougar has surfaced for private sale in Port Orchard, Washington — equipped with the rare factory four-speed manual transmission and asking $21,500. That’s well below the current market average of roughly $41,000 for the model. The listing appeared on Craigslist, was spotted by Barn Finder Curvete, and landed on Barn Finds on May 10, 2026.

The car wears Caspian Blue, one of 16 factory exterior colors offered on the 1967 Cougar. Under the hood sits the C-Code 289 cubic-inch V8 in two-barrel form — rated at 200 horsepower and 282 lb-ft of torque. The second owner has recently put meaningful mechanical attention into the car, and the seller calls it a turnkey proposition. By all accounts, it presents extremely well.

Why the Four-Speed Makes This Car Worth Watching

The numbers tell a compelling story, though the precise breakdown warrants some caution. Mercury’s internal sales data for the 1967 model year has been cited as showing that roughly 80.9% of Cougars left the factory with automatic transmissions, 13.8% with three-speed manuals, and approximately 5.3% with a four-speed — figures that have not been independently verified but are consistent with the seller’s own claims. Applied against total 1967 production of 150,893 units, that would work out to roughly 7,997 four-speed Cougars built — and the standard hardtop accounted for 123,672 of the model run. Sixty years of attrition, crashes, and transmission swaps have thinned that number considerably further.

That last point matters here. Factory manual-trans Cougars are scarce enough that owner-converted examples are common, which makes a genuine stick-shift car meaningfully harder to verify than it might appear. The seller has not provided a Marti Report — a notable omission that any serious buyer should address before writing a check. A door data plate showing transmission code “5” (wide-ratio) or “6” (close-ratio) would be the first thing to inspect in person.

One more historical footnote worth noting: 1967 was the final production year for Ford’s 289 block before the switch to the 302 c.i.d. for 1968, which gives this engine code additional weight beyond its displacement alone.

Context — What a First-Gen Cougar Actually Is

The Mercury Cougar launched on September 30, 1966. It shared the Ford Mustang platform but was positioned a deliberate step upmarket — longer hood, shorter deck, hidden headlights, a split front grille, and sequential rear turn signals borrowed from the Thunderbird. Ford slotted it precisely between the Mustang and the T-Bird. The market responded: the Cougar took the 1967 Motor Trend Car of the Year award and remains the only Mercury model to have done so.

That same year, Bud Moore Engineering campaigned factory-backed Cougars in the Trans-Am Series with drivers including Dan Gurney and Parnelli Jones, finishing just two points behind Ford in the championship. That racing pedigree cemented the model’s performance credentials alongside its luxury positioning.

Unlike the Mustang, every first-generation Cougar left the factory with a V8. When evaluating originality, that’s not a trivial distinction.

The Price Argument

At $21,500, this Cougar is priced at roughly half the current average for the model on Classics on Autotrader, where comparable examples range from as low as $3,995 to north of $225,000. For a two-owner, recently serviced car with a documented rare-option transmission in a color that photographs well, the ask looks measured rather than aggressive — provided the mechanical work holds up to inspection and the four-speed claim checks out.

“The price seems reasonable if it’s as solid and clean as it looks in the pictures.”

— Barn Finds reader comment, May 10, 2026

Pontiac and Mercury are long gone. First-generation pony cars with rare factory configurations and clean ownership histories are not getting easier to find — and they are not getting cheaper. A Marti Report and a thorough pre-purchase inspection are the logical next steps for anyone serious about this one. The listing is active; contact is through Craigslist in Port Orchard, Washington.

Sources

• Barn Finds — Original Listing Feature, May 10, 2026