Boy, an SVT Contour is a hell of a car to develop your manual transmission skills on. I learned to drive a manual on a 69 VW Bus. Your car is relatively new so this may not be the problem but, after driving my 95 reasonably hard (85-95+ cruising) across the country and back, I fried a bare spot in the wire leading to the TPS, causing it to short out. Talk about bucking and kicking! This was consistent though, and you couldn't dirve it hard enough to get the revs up very high.
