you can start off with an inexpensive system that will do wonders for your car. First of all, dont even worry about your back speakers that much. You are mainly going to be hearing your front speakers while you are driving. You can buy a 4 channell amp to poweryour front speakers and bridge the other 2 channels to power a small 10 or 12" sub. You can do this all for under a grand if you talk to guys on here on where to go to get what. May run you a bit more if your not able to do the install yourself. the glory of credit cards. I bought my contour on August 6th 1999 with no intention of putting a major stereo in it. On August 8th it was sitting in the shop getting a system. Stock radio is awful in these cars!!!!!! In the 90's most car companies started putting decent systems in cars but not ford apparently (maybe the ones with premium sound were better?" Even with the 2grand I spent on the stereo that brought my car up to 17,500 total. God I love this car!!!