This photograph shows the great 1967 number 15 Mercury Cougar driver Parnelli Jones, as seen at the Bud Moore Shop in 1966.

The number 15 Mercury Cougar was entered for the race by Bud Moore Racing. In 1967, renowned NASCAR race car builder Bud Moore campaigned Mercury Cougars in the Trans-Am Series with Ford Motor Company factory support. The team featured superstar-caliber drivers, such as Captain Dan Gurney, Parnelli Jones, Peter Revson, David Pearson, and Ed Leslie. Factory support dried up towards the end of the season. Ultimately, Mercury lost the championship to Ford by two points. In 1968, Bud Moore took his Cougars NASCAR racing in the newly formed Grand American series. Star driver Tiny Lund dominated the series and took the championship. After the Cougar changed to the Thunderbird platform in 1974, the bodystyle was raced in NASCAR. The Wood Brothers Racing team with David Pearson and later Neil Bonnett was very successful with the car and scored a number of victories until the bodystyle became ineligible following the 1980 season. The next year (1981) saw the previous Cougar teams switch to the Thunderbird when NASCAR mandated the smaller (110-inch-wheelbased) cars, though oddly the Thunderbirds had to have their wheel bases stretched 6 inches, as the production cars wheelbase was only 104 inches. From 1989 to 1990, Lincoln-Mercury Motorsport fielded Cougars of the new body style in the GTO class of the IMSA GT Championship. The cars collected the championship both years, and continued the teams' streak to seven manufacturer's championships.

Mercury Cougar is the name applied to a diverse series of automobiles sold by the Mercury division of Ford Motor Company from 1967 to 2002. As was common with Mercury vehicles, the Cougar shared basic platforms with Ford models. Originally, this was the Mustang, later the Thunderbird, and the last a version of the Contour/Mondeo. The Cougar was important to Mercury's image for many years, and advertising often identified its dealers as being "at the sign of the cat." Female models holding big cats on leashes were used on Cougar ads in the early 1970s. The car was assembled at the Dearborn Assembly Plant (DAP) (one of six plants within the Ford Rouge Center) in Dearborn, Michigan from 1967 to 1973, at the San Jose Assembly Plant in Milpitas, California from 1968 into early 1969 and at the Lorain Assembly Plant (LAP) in Lorain, Ohio from 1974 to 1997.

The photograph that the winner of this auction will receive is a very nice and very rare non period photo that reflects a wonderful era of Mercury and Trans-Am automotive history in a wonderful way.  This is your rare chance to own this photo. It has a nice large format of ca. 8" x 9" (ca. 20 x 24 cm).  It makes it perfectly suitable for framing.