Originally posted by KingDiamond:

1. How reliable are these cars? Anything that usually goes wrong at a certain mileage?

2. Is it a bad idea to buy a Contour SVT with over 80,000 miles? I bought my mustang with 85,000 miles and it was fine until about 100,000 miles and stuff started breaking.

3. What octane gasoline do they use?




3) They use 91 minimum.

1) Pretty reliable with a few glaring achiles heel's:

- Waterpump implosion
- 3rd gear syncro goes
- Intake system easily gets dirty and causes all sorts of idle / throttle problems
- Fuel pump is kinda weak
- Unfixable '3rd gear' bucking at light throttle (some cars have it, some dont')
- Long sweeping right hand turns at rpms > 2.5k will deprive engine of oil and implode. "Fixes" are running extra oil (6.5qt) and an accusump unit as a 'just in case'.

2) Get it checked out. Check all the issues I listed above cause the person may be selling for that reason. If it's ticking/pinging/knocking -- that's the oil issue and the bearings are knocking and the engine is on it's way out. Many people have transplated a 3.0L when that happens.