Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General General if only Ford were the same as VW....

I believe a large part of the problem is that us car buyers are NOT Ford customers.

Ok, collect your selves, we are not GM, BMW, customer either. Ford, for the most part, sells all of it's auto/truck production to dealers.

This model makes it really hard for the average customer to have much sway with Ford since they are not selling you the cars.

I'm sure they had to force dealers to take Contours at the end in order to get allocations of more desireable cars. Probably including the SVT Contour. Mr Dealership owner, you want X Cobra Mustangs and Y Lightning, well you also have to take Z number of these SVT Contour thingies we have over here.

Of course, the Ford owned stores here have not done well where Ford took over some privately owned dealerships. Ford is probably better at designing, building, and then decontenting cars than they are at actually selling them to the public.

With the dealer network, Ford really doesn't deal with the public, but with those dealers.

Unfortunately, it seems Ford will let just about everybody become Blue Oval Certified, or whatever the program of the month is, so the dealers work towards certification instead of actual customer satisfaction.

Of course, I'm doing a really great job at pointining the problem. I don't have much to offer in terms of solutions, other than if you find a good dealer, try to do business with him, since it will be him that has to go to bat with you to get Ford to pay for warranty and after warranty adjustments.

Remember, we are not Ford's customers, the dealerships are. As long as the dealer is selling the cars, I bet many other things are allowed to slide.

My opinion.

TB