1998 Ford Contour SE

Here is an example of a car that looks great on paper but in real life was not what it should have been. I traded my failing 1995 Saturn SL2 sedan for this '98 Contour in the summer of 2001. It came equipped with the 2.5L V6 rated at 170hp. The automatic transmission had 4 gears and the brakes were disc in front and drum in the rear. A Contour weighed in at around 2769lbs according to Consumerguide.com which is pretty good when you have 165ft/lb torque pulling it. Again, power to weight ratio was looking good on paper and the V6 was rated at around 22mpg combined which was competitive.

Here's what I liked about the car. The V6 was good for it's relatively small displacement. The torque factor is something I had never had before, it's hard to build torque on a small displacement engine. The handling was fairly good on this model, the SE stuck to the road well. On ramps were fun to rev the six and dig into the curve. The interior was roomy enough for me, plenty of head room (I'm not that tall so it usually isn't a problem). A nice attribute of this car was the heater core pumped out a tremendous amount of BTU's to keep you nice and warm in the cold Wisconsin winter. I can't say that about all the cars I've had.

Alright, here's where the rest of the story gets ugly. I only owned this car for 8 months before I traded it in. I had it in the shop 7 times. I kid you not. Two recalls racked up 4 trips to the dealer (they couldn't properly perform the procedures), one other trip was an alternator replacement, another was a wheel bearing, and another was to change the transmission fluid because it was burnt (at only 40k). I spent 2k in repairs and there was no sign telling me it would slow down. Bottom line, I learned that reliability in a car is very important to me.

Now let me clarify. I understand that maintenance is a cost of a car. In fact I will spend a bit more up front to keep my car running well and in good shape than most people will. I like to be proactive and prevent things from wearing out if I can. But repairs are totally different. I bought the car with around 33k on the odometer and to have burnt transmission fluid, an alternator and wheel bearing go out is unacceptable. I was barely over 40k at this point. With the money I spent in repairs I could have put a down payment on a much nicer car (I should have looked at the Prelude...) but that's another story. I was a college student at the time and I was taking a class in Milwaukee while working in Brookfield and living in Sussex. Driving was part of the way I lived life and the constant interruption in my transportation was interfering with my life.

With all of this I did get reinforced from my Contour that I like a sporty nature in my vehicles. Good handling and power to weight ratio is a great formula in my book. When I was looking to trade this car in I did look for a 2000 Celica or '98 Prelude but couldn't find one that was under 17k (I only had a max budget of around 11k at the time). I did take a test drive of a nice '98 Accord LX V6 and '00 Camry LE 4cyl.

I was very impressed with the Camry and how posh it felt. The ride was very easy and the insulation kept you nice and isolated from road noise. It actually felt like driving a Lincoln at a far lower price point. The 6 speaker stereo had good acoustics in the cabin and the reliability reputation of Toyota (at the time) spoke very loudly to me. I traded the Contour for the Camry sedan. Looking back I probably should have gone for the Accord for a number of reasons but that's a different blog.

So in March of '02 I was the owner of a 2000 Camry LE. I don't think my Contour was on the lot very long. I think the dealer was able to sell it in just over 40 days. I feel bad for the person that bought it, maybe it was bad karma?