Vehicle report
1978 MERCURY COUGAR
This model year
What the record shows
The 1978 Mercury Cougar is the 17th model year of a nameplate NHTSA records from 1962 to 2002.
The federal record holds 2 owner complaints and 1 investigation for it.
Counts are reports, not rates. A complaint is something an owner chose to file; it is unverified and unadjusted for how many of these cars were sold, so the useful comparison is against other model years of the same car. Recalls and investigations carry more weight because a manufacturer or regulator acted on them.
Reading this report
Complaint counts are reports filed with NHTSA, not failure rates. A common model collects more of them than a rare one that breaks more often.