Ford didn’t leave all the muscle car fun to its main brand. Mercury also had a couple in its lineup at the start of the 1970s. Chief among those was its best-seller of the era, the Cougar. As with so many vehicles released during the height of the “Horsepower Wars" there were plenty of flavors to choose from, the best of which was the high-performance Eliminator variant with a 428 Super Cobra Jet V-8. The mill, which makes more than a few appearances on this list, was brawny, generating an exhilarating 400 hp. The Cougar Eliminator may not be as fondly remembered as the Barracuda, Camaro, or Mustang, but it could hold its own.
From the article by Robert Ross, Bryan Hood, Erik Shilling