Hey Dave...
I've autocrossed a 99 SE Sport in GS for the past season and a half... this past season on race rubber (Kumhos).
I'd recommend starting with GS. It gives you a good taste of the car and how it works on race rubber... which is a bit different than even the decent SVT street tires. It will give you a lot of valuable experience.
Now, the Type Rs, Eclipses, etc, will be nearly impossible to beat. But you can get mighty close if you drive well... and if you drive well and they don't... you just might have an upset. :-)
The main problem with the Contour in any stock form is the lack of adjustable front camber... with all that V-6 hanging out in front of the axle, it really needs the camber that *cannot* be adjusted. I frequently ran against a Corrado (V-6) that could legally get almost -3 degrees of camber into the front of his car... made it darn near impossible to beat him, but I did on the rare occasion.
But if you can learn to make the most of the car and worry people from time-to-time, then you'll be doing well, and gaining great experience.
And, the bonus is then you'll know what you want to change in terms of how you'd like to tweak the handling. Then you can make your STS changes in the car, and know full well what you want to accomplish by making the changes. All the seat time you gained in GS will help you pin-point that stuff.
Good luck, and let me know if you have any more questions.
--Dave
PS -- The Stock rules proposal that was referred to in this thread will *not* take place until 2002... So we're still in GS with all the usual suspects. And, for what it's worth, even though the regular V-6 SE is *not* listed with the SVT in the proposal, it *is* grouped with it regardless. Someone from the national office cleared that up recently.
