![]() ![]() An electronically controlled four-speed automatic transmission is optional.įord sold 151,060 Contours last year, down 13.3 percent from the 174,187 models sold the previous year. #Ford contour manual#The five-speed manual transmission is standard on the front-wheel-drive Contour, which is available as the LX, the more upscale SE and the truly hot Contour SVT sport model. But that engine feels like an economy job, something that belongs in a smaller Ford Escort. My favorite is the tested 2.5-liter, 24-valve Duratec V-6, designed to produce 170 horsepower at 6,250 rpm and 165 pound-feet of torque at 4,250 rpm.Ī more economica l, 125-horsepower, 2-liter, four-cylinder Zetec engine is available. (Those of you who complained to me about fighting with the gears in the older Contours might want to give this one a try.)Īs was the case in previous models, Ford is offering two engines in the 1999 Contour. It’s relatively smooth shifting all around, with improved clutch work to boot. I noticed something else - the absence of notchiness in the five-speed manual gearbox in the new Contour. Truth is, those lighter front seats are more comfortable, and more supportive of adult bottoms and backs, than the fatter seats they replaced. But that would be an erroneous assumption. #Ford contour driver#There was little usable legroom for rear passengers in the older Contours, and if those passengers were, say, nearly six feet tall, they had to scrunch their legs to fit.įord corrected that problem by reconfiguring the front seats, taking the bulk out of them in a way that adds about a half-inch more space for the knees and 1.2 inches more overall for the legs of rear-seat passengers.Ĭonventional wisdom would say that driver and front-passenger seating comfort were sacrificed in the process. The key difference between them and the newest Contours is that the new cars seem to be designed and assembled with more attention to detail. That’s too bad, because the first Contours were decent, despite their shortcomings. And when they walk away, it’s hard to get them to come back. They walk away when you mess with them on something as important to their daily lives as a car. Both cars, as currently constituted, easily compete against the Acura Integra, Mazda 626, Nissan Altima, Mitsubishi Galant and Dodge Stratus, the Contour’s main rivals in the compact sedan category.īut getting consumers to believe that the Contour now is up to snuff is going to take some work. Had Ford done things right the first time, the company wouldn’t be struggling today to boost the sagging sales of the Contour and its mechanical twin, the Mercury Mystique. ![]() The upshot is that the tested 1999 Ford Contour SE is the Contour that Ford should have made in the beginning. That should be a cause for celebration instead of an occasion for corporate euphemisms. But it is also true that most of those “improvements” came in direct response to customer complaints. There were seat readjustments to create more legroom, suspension rearrangements to provide better ride and handling, exterior tweaks to mute its jelly-bean look, and changes to help the instrument panel make more sense.įord prefers to call those fixes “improvements,” things done in the normal course of product development. That is, the car has been in a constant state of correction. The Ford Contour has been a work in progress since its introduction in 1995. ![]()
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