Let's get back to the thread topic please. Not Tesla, not 60 or 70's era cars.

 

i think the $2 billion refers to the combined cost of developing the cougar and thunderbird along side each other... but either way a seemingly ridiculous amount to spend developing something that only came with an anemic V6, and disc brakes were still an option

 

$1-2 Billion is not an excessive amount to spend in developing an entirely new vehicle-line. $3 Billion, for example (at 1980s rate of inflation), was spent to develop the hugely successful Taurus/Sable twins of the mid-late 1980s.....and some $6 Billion, later in the 1990s, for the Contour/Mystique twins.

 

a big reason cars cost billions to develop is they have to pass all local, regional, national government regulations in potentially over 100 countries depending on the model.
then there's coordination with suppliers, labor management, plant management, it's all an enormous job even if a car seems 'simple'.

 

They also have to have a lot of comfort/convenience features in them (which adds money) simply because, never mind the government.......today's customers demand it. Even most base-line subcompacts/econoboxes almost always have electric windows/door-locks/mirrors and A/C. I think the last new American-market vehicle I saw with crank-windows was the Mitsubishi Mirage of several years ago, although the base Nissan Versa might (?) still also have them.

 

I still own my '87, the last generation where the Cougar and T-Bird were on the Foxbody platform with the Mustang (the car my parents wouldn't let me get, hahahaha). They sold 100K plus Cougars in 87 and 88 each, I suppose I could see why Ford would invest in the future platform which did run another decade.

I'm currently working with it on a review of the BF Goodrich Radial T/A tire...

 

Very cool!

 

One thing if the Cougar or any other pos Ford was designing back then was a spherical cow in a vacuum, but $2B for it vs $1B for the LS400 and $400Mish for the SC400. Seems ridiculous in this perspective.

 

What's the story on the paint? It looks great!

 

So this one is the Mustang platform, which is BOF with solid rear axle, and the new one is unibody with IRS? Because visually the new one looks like a minor refresh.

 

@Och It's unibody with a solid rear axle. 87s actually have the smaller rear axle where the Mustangs had to the 8.8. Cougar XR7s snagged the 8.8 for 88. In terms of weight and drivetrain dimensions, 87-88 Cougars and T-Birds are actually closer to 94-98 SN95 generation Mustangs than 79-93 Foxbody Mustangs. (although basically most Mustang suspension parts work from 79-04 bc the platform evolved very little)

@LexBob2 I can assure you it's not perfect and my photo editing helped, but it's a 46K mile survivor. I bought it in 1997 and it's been garaged or covered most of its life. Sadly it does suffer from swirl marks and other blemishes thanks to some poor usage of car covers on my part. Here's a less fancy photo from just after I got the turbine wheels done...