Our Contours are so overengineered in terms of electronic controls and the electrical system is so badly put together that this problem could be anything, and is probably many things. If I were in your shoes and I would read through as many posts as possible and take all cheap pm actions like tb and egr passage cleaning, new air/fuel filters, new plugs, wires, iac, dpfe, use liquid elec tape to shore up your wiring throughout the engine, of course clean the maf, replace cracked/weakened hoses and even consider a new battery (this is the first car I've owned where a 100% charged battery is better than a 90% charged one - on most cars its binary, either the battery is good enough or not, i.e. 90% and 100% are equal). Once you feel like you have put in the same extreme effort on this car that has everyone else here, then your problems become fewer, and though you will never get this car to run like almost any other car of the same age and miles since it is just a much more poorly built car, you will at least be generally happy with it since you are just trying to rehabilitate it a little, and have succeeded at that. That may sound harsh but to have a more positive attitude is to set yourself up for chronic frustration.
