You know, the "throwaway" mechanic has a point.
Most Contours, not SVT's, but ones like mine, are a pretty poor design, and generally are not worth taking past 110,000 miles.
For example, the CD4E trans. We of course love stickshifts, but average American/Canadian driving a Contour, has his lever in "D". Why? Maybe North Americans generally have a lower intelligence or maybe more of a laziness? I don't want to get into a transmission flame war, but hey, how come in the rest of the world, 90-98% of cars are manual shift, here it is the opposite?
Anyway, back to my point, the CD4E is a [censored] design, with no trans filter. (there is a "strainer" though) CD4E's usually last between 75 and 120,000 miles. A transmission, whatever it is, should last the life of the car. Note what I said, "life of the car". An engine also should. The lifespan of these parts are essentially "the lifespan of the car". A drivetrain on a modern car should run 200,000 miles without rebuilding or major repairs, or more, with the recommended maintenance schedule.
100,000 miles is a lot less. And the Contique is essentially a boring family sedan, which used has no value because the trans (amoung other things) is a poor design.
Lets check out my u-pull boneyard I frequent:
There are 11 Contiques. 7 are 4-cyl. 10 are CD4E. 1 is a V6 5-speed. I asked for a trans (CD4E) a while ago, and the response was: "Sorry, they're all bad". The 5-spd. car was wrecked badly, and was a 95 model anyway. The rest of the automatic cars ranged between 1996 and 2000(newest Ford product there). 2000! And they were in the boneyard why? The transmission! The milage ranged from 78,500 on one and 124,000 on another (lo-hi). There are many other recent Ford products there as well.
But, the newest Saab there is a 1993 (164,000 miles) model, with a blown headgasket, easy fix.
The newest GM car is a 1994 "Dustbuster" minivan rollover.
Newest Mercedes-Benz is a 1982 300SD (over 250k mi)Turbo.
Newest Volvo is a 1989 240.
Newest Chrysler is a 1996 Concorde.
All of these cars had automatic transmissions.
What does this say for "Quality is Job 1" and such? What does it say for the design of the Contour?
just a thought.
