First of all let me set something straight. You can pour all the credentials you want out at me, but they do not mean a thing. The only proof I have of who you are is something you sat down at a keyboard and typed, and do not quote me as calling you a liar, but I can do the same thing behind my keyboard as well. I judge personal integrity after meeting the person face to face and get to know them for awhile. Until then my opinions of them are kept to myself.
Secondly, I will be very careful when I put my badges on to let people know that my car is a Contour. I know that the four doors are easy to miss sometimes and that my car resembles that of a Mustang. Wouldn't want anybody thinking I have a Bullitt edition Mustang or a Mustang Cobra. So I will be careful.
Lastly, I do not mock or take the hard work put in by Ford as a joke, as I alone cannot reproduce what Ford has done with this great looking Mustang. I am not ignorant to the performance gains either.... note that I did not say that cosmetics was the only thing that Ford did with this car. These responses prove my point that we assign so much power to words and symbols that we have actually put cars like the Bullitt Mustang up on a pedestal and started treating them with honor and precedence and made them into a god for no other reason than the label. If this Mustang were the same but without the Bullitt logos and title, nobody would give a second thought to my putting "Bullitt" on the car. It is ok to retro fit a fuel door (with a mustang on the inside of it) off of a Bullitt Mustang, or maybe even the rims too if a 5 lug pattern were adapted to the Contour. It is ok to swap out SE bumpers and side skirts for SVT bumpers and side skirts, but the moment you put three letters on (referring to SVT) people will jump all over you like there is no tomorrow. I say let the car speak for the owner and their tastes. What I am doing is not deception- any idiot can tell that my car is not a real Cobra or a real Bullitt edition, and if they can't- well, I probably don't want to be talking to them anyways. If Ford really felt that the labels Bullitt and SVT and the Cobra emblem had so much power that they did not belong on any other car but the real deal, and that any other use would defame them, why do they offer it to ANY customer who walks through their door? They restrict the color changing paint, so I think it is in their hands to do this with the special edition emblems too.