I've had my '95 since'95. At the 3 year mark, I bought the extended warranty, it cost about $1200 and to be honest, it gave me piece of mind, but I only came close to recovering that in repair costs (and of course that was dealership rates which are pricey). In reality, I could've not got the extended warranty and probably spent about $400-500 for stuff at a normal shop for the first 7 years of ownership. (I'm not counting tires and brakes...) just other stuff (sensors, gaskets etc). That's not bad in my books. The upside of the warranty was being able to push to get marginal stuff fixed with the idea of having a car in better shape when it comes off warranty.
Of course now it's off warranty, so I'm more inclined to do my own wrenching on the car. I paid the dealer to do plugs & wires last summer and vowed never again will it go to the dealer (barring recall).
Anyway, whether you do any wrenching yourself or not, you might think about investing in a manual so you can at least see what's involved when someone is quoting a price... also if you have a laptop, maybe an OBDII reader so you can read your own error codes (like the one they just did a group buy on here).
When I bought the car, they were suppossed to be Ford's "world car" and set new performance and durability (hence "duratec") benchmarks for relatively inexpensive mid sized cars.... I don't think they missed by too much. They never quite caught on the way I'd hoped/expected they would, but I test drove most other cars in the class at the time, and the contour did feel worlds better than most (to me).
Brent
