Hi there, and welcome to the site. Now for my 2 cents:
I do agree with the questions of if you didn't like the car from day 1, why buy it? BUT, that's your decision, and in all honesty, you made a good one. If not for some strange reason. LOL.
Anyway, to let you know, before we got our 98 Tour.... 4 cyl, I had a 1986 Tempo, and a 94 Escort GT. While both were good cars, the Tempo was on it's last leg. My hub & I went to the dealer, I told hub I wanted a 4 door this time, BUT he wanted a 4X4. We ended up getting a 94 Explorer.
A year later, for a Mother's Day/Birthday pressie for me, we looked into trading the Escort in. Once again, since he "stole" the Explorer from me, I told him a 4 door, I will NOT settle for anything less.
We went to the dealer, did the credit check, and the salesman says "I got the perfect thing for your family" and he pulls around in a 98 SE, champagne, 4 cyl. First thing out of my mouth was COOOOOOOOLLLLLL. I love the look of it. We got it to test drive it. My hub got to be the one since I forgot my license. As he drove it, first thing he said was "I want this car!" I casually reminded him that it's MY car, unless he was giving up the truck. LOL. He refused to do that though.
We got this car at 27,000 miles, it was used as a rental by the dealer. It was in great condition, no dings or dents. We have had this car since May of 99, and the only problems I have had were had to get the tranny rebuilt because the torque converter went out in October, and now, I have to replace an Oxygen sensor, but besides an elderly gent hitting my back door after pulling out from a parking spot.
The car gets great mileage, handles wonderfully, and it safer than our Explorer. We have 2 boys, one is 10yrs old, & the other is 7 months. Since finding this site, & my 10yr old seeing all the cars on here, he loves Contours even more.
