Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General General What's your Contour story? (How did you find your Contour?)

  Mine is a story of desperation.

  A few years before, the motor in my 1994 Tempo overheated and was ruined.  I was barely able to scrape together the resources to have a new motor put in it.  The new motor had a 12-month, 12,000 mile warranty, which, living 50 mile from where I work, really lasted about half a year.  Nearly a year after the new motor was installed, a part broke off of one of the pistons.  Still heavily in debt as a result of buying that motor, I spent several months and a lot more money trying to fix it.  I honed out the affected cylinder and installed a new piston, but things just kept going wrong with that motor after this point.  I'd fix one thing, and something else would break.  By the time I gave up, I'd replaced two pistons, and the head, along with countless other more minor parts, and was beginning to suspect that the block itself was damaged beyond reasonable repair, from the original piston failure.

  I'd reached the point where I was convinced that the only way to properly repair this car was to replace the whole motor, again.  It occurred to me that there were resources by which I might possibly be able to borrow enough money to do this.  Alas, no, I couldn't.  I needed $3,000, at least, and I was able to come up with only $1,100.

  I was beginning to wonder about the feasibility of buying another car.  I was aware that because a car loan is secured by the car, it might be easier to borrow the money to buy a car, compared to the unsecured borrowing I was trying to do.

  There's a Hyundai dealership that has set up business in a K-Mart parking lot, here in Lompoc.  I was desperate enough, at this point, that I would have actually considered a Hyundai, if that was all I could get.  I was wandering through their lot, with my wife, looking at their used section, when this 1996 Mystique caught my attention.  About that same time, so did one of their salesdroids.

  The $1,100 that I was able to borrow ended up making a very good down payment on this Mystique. I was a bit concerned about the fact that it had over 100,000 miles on it, but it appeared to be in remarkable condition for a car that's seen that much use.  It did need a new timing belt (and, as I later discovered, when I actually took it in to have that done, it also needed new timing belt tensioner pulleys).

  I ended up selling my Tempo for $400 to a gentleman who has since fixed it up with a junkyard engine, and has told me that he's quite pleased with it.

  This was all just about a year ago.  At this point, I am convinced that the Mystique was a very good choice.  It seems to be very reliable, compared to other cars I've owned.  I'm amazed at how it peforms and handles.  Many years ago, I rented an Eagle Talon for a short while.  I would have rented a Neon, but they were all out of those at the moment, so I got the Talon.  OK, I thought, this would be fun.  The Talon, I found to be a big dissapointment.  It looked like a fancy, sporty-type car, so I thought it'd be fun to drive.  It didn't perform or handle any better than the more mundane cars to which I was accustomed, it was awkward to get in and out of it, all the controls just seemed wrong, ergonomically, there was little usable cargo space, and it had a stupid spoiler that blocked the view out the rear window.  My Mystique performs and handles about the way I had expected of the Talon before I actually drove it, without all the disadvantages that are inherent in sporty-type cars.