My stoy of how I came accross this automotive platform starts with the death of its predicessor.

I used to own a Tempo 2 Door with an auto trans, but one day I screwed up on the freeway and ended up going backwards into the center divider at 70 mph, completly totaling the car. Luckily crashing backwards made it the most comfy crash you could have. I had no injuries neither did my friend who side took the brunt of the damage.

A few days later I needed a new car and I needed one soon. It had to be cheap and reliable (failed on this one),those were the only two stipulations. The first car I and my Father came accross was a Chevy Mystique, in the local classifieds. Obviously miss claissifyed the mistake gave me an advantage on finding the car first as all others looking looking for a mercury would skip over the Chevy section.

I called the owner and talked to him about the condition of the vehcial, and by the way he described it was near perfect.

Latter on in the day my family and I drove over to take a look. It was a clean 99 Mercury Mystique with 34,000 miles on the clock with a asking price of 4,400. The price seemd fair and we decided to take a test drive. While the engine performance wasn't stunning it was fater then my tempo was. And given that the engine was running well I decided this car would have to do. Drove back to the owner blah blah blah and ended up picking it up for $4K.

I learned to enjoy the car later on, initailly it was very boring amfm casset 14 inch steelies and a brown interior. Plane and boring. Then I did the best upgrade I have ever done on a car. A set of 15 x 6.5 rage breaker rims, and some warrior tires. Even though the tires weren't the sporties the added with and the shorrter sidewall really woke up the cars handling. It was a blast to drive fast threw 90 degree turns and moutain roads. It really put a smile on my face.

Unfortuantly about a year later I got a CEL that would never go away, and it went down hill from there, over heating auto trans wouldn't start in the cold, horrible idle. I got sick of the problems.

But not sick enough to jump platforms. For my next car I decided to remedy all the past problems. Slow rough unreliable zetec was replaced with a 2.5 duratec. Overheating Auto with a 5 speed. Lame brown cloth interior Midnight Blue leather. Hell everything in my new SVT contour is an upgrade over the Mystique. Its truly an awsome car, and I hope to have it for some time to come.

I joined CEG to try to find a way to fix my ailing Mystique but have enjoyed other aspects of this forum quite a bit lately. Digitpress.com is my fav forum but this one is quickly catching up.

Ok thats more then enough