• Steering feel. The tightness and road feel when driving near straight beat the Mazda 3, and everything else I test-drove too.

    This is one of the main reasons I bought my Contour. IMO there's no excuse for every modern car to not have steering this good. But the only other car I've ever driven that had such good feel was a 2001 BMW 325i. My '93 Lincoln Mark VIII came close believe it or not, but it was a little bit twitchy and overboosted.

    The other day I had to drive a friend's '90 fullsize Chevy truck. I was all over the road with the damn thing for the first several miles because it had over 2 inches of free play before the steering would do anything!

  • The ability to go over residential speed bumps smoothly at 25 mph. In general, the tour is much better at smoothing bumps while still being able to corner hard.

    Yep. I like how the ride is firm, but the chassis is stiff enough that it doesn't shudder on rough roads.

  • Believe it or not, the speakers. (The Mazda comes with Bose speakers which are, like every Bose product, hideous garbage with a huge price markup.)

    I agree, they aren't bad for stock speakers! When I took them out I was surprised to see that they have plastic cones and rubber surrounds. Definitely better than the normal factory paper/cloth surround crap.

    A friend of mine has a '98 Vette with the Bose system. It's by far the worst "premium" stereo I've ever heard. It makes everything sound like an AM radio station. Certainly lives up to the "no highs, no lows, must be Bose" saying.

  • Front compartments that are actually sized right to put CDs in. (Not that my contour played CDs.)

    Now this I'd like. It seems like Ford designed my 99's center console to be as woefully useless as possible.

    Things I don't miss:

  • Cheap interior plastics.

    I'm not too keen on the interior quality either. But it's not horrible, and the damn thing's so fun to drive I don't really care. Plus all the controls feel really good (especially the turnsignal/wiper stalks), even if they don't look like a million bucks.

    • '99 Contour Sport V6 MTX