Zebulon, North Carolina: Big Mercury Cougar

The big cat is out in front of Howden Classic Cars, which is in a building that used to be a Ford dealership. There are a few awesomely cool vintage cars in the showroom.

The Cat was moved about 1/2 mile down the road this summer, but can still be seen along Gannon Avenue.

The cougar statue used to sit atop Chris Leith Mercury on Capitol Boulevard (US Highway 1 South) in Raleigh. I remember it definitely being up there in the late 1980s. It was long gone by the mid-1990s, once Leith moved all their dealerships to the North Raleigh area. The building has housed a number of used car dealerships and auto body and detail shops since then.

Back in the days when "Cougar" was a big name for Mercury cars, one of the local dealerships had one that was about 20 ft. tall on the roof. Odd as it may sound, the Cougar was within a few hundred yards of the original location of Raleigh's muffler man! The cat disappeared 25 or so years ago. I found it again on New Year's eve on a pass through Zebulon, NC.