e all know the rap on the ’71 Mercury Cougar: Embracing its personal-luxury duties like never before, the newly redesigned kitty shared its guts with its Ford Mustang sibling, but its formal exterior treatment became ever more pronounced. Even as high-performance was a dirty term in the new-car industry, its once-raging inferno now flickering like a lighter in the wind, high-performance buyers were fleeing Mercury almost as quickly as
