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Why do people say Contours were cheaply made Fords?

E

Eric2.0

CEG'er
Joined
Nov 17, 2009
Messages
117
Location
NY
No troll or trying to start controversy, lol.

I've owned two Contours, a 99 and currently a 98 both with Ztec 4's. While not the most powerful 4cl cars I've driven they do get the job done and are reliable.
Time after time I hear people claim that Ford built these cars cheaply, are not reliable and were bad years for Ford. I beg to differ.

I suppose they aren't built as good as a new Focus or something, but IMO they are damn solid cars! I recently took apart the front struts of mine and the way the suspension is together is strong and solid. Also driving the car feels solid and a bit heavy(which is good) means it has some beef to it. Compared to my sisters Elantra, my Contour feels much more solid and not filmsy and thin like the Elantra although the Elantra will beat the Contour easily in the quarter mile. To drive I prefer My Contour...feels solid and handles real nice, thicker doors and more iron.

I've looked my Conotur over from top to bottom and I can't see why Conours are any different from any other compact car in th way it is built, materials ect ect.... IMO it's a very solid built car....that front suspension and subframe are kinda overkill....it's tough!

So why do people say Conours are bad cars, built badly and cheap materials? I don't get it.
 
The interiors are a bit plastic-y, but to be honest, there weren't too many serious flaws I can think of. Early water pumps didn't live as long as they should, same for early fuel pumps. Otherwise, at 247,000 miles, my car still works fine.

Mad Dog
 
IMO my sisters Elantra is more cheap and plastic feeling than my Contour. Probably just me, but....I know I like the inside of my Contour better than the Elantra.
 
The negative history is more about poor reliability,frequency of repairs (Look at JD Power and Consumer Reports...), and oft times, difficulty of repairs. Ford service techs hated the Contour/Mystique platform, it was not built with serviceability in mind. For its era, the Contour/Mystique was actually pretty well screwed together, and the chassis stiffness was decently high, leading to good ride and handling characteristics with an unsophisticated suspension.

The Contour is still a better car than many of today's entry-level econo-boxes, no argument there.
 
MadDog said:
The engine bay is kind of tight. Maybe I have been lucky.

Mad Dog
Click to expand...

Yeah, small arms and hands helps with underhood work. The 4-cylinder cars are definitely easier to wrench.

Sometimes, when I want to feel like I've worked under the hood of my Contour, I take a razor blade and nick up my hands and forearms.
 
I don't know why people thought they were cheaply made, both Contours I've owned are/were ultra reliable, my last Contour I owned for 7+ years and about 80K and it needed a total of 3 parts. I can't see where they're oming from in the interior either, superior materials and an overall more sturdy feeling than its american (and some japanese) rivals at the time.

Hell, I got in my cousins 2003 cobra, wanna talk about cheap interior go look at one of those. :nonono: And difficulty of repair? Well, I modded more than I repaired but go work on an Intrepid from that era with a longitudinally mounted V6 in a FWD and tell me the Contour is hard to work on, or a Chevy 3.8 IIRC where reaching the rear bank plugs required tilting the motor forward, and even just filling the PS fluid (a common problem, notice how all Pontiacs from that era whine like crazy, and not from a supercharger) which is located next to the passenger strut tower and about a foot down in a little hole.
 
Everyone's experiences are different, obviously, and cars owned by enthusiasts like CEG tend to be better taken care of than the basic transportation Cuisinarts driven by the mouth-breathing, maintenance-neglecting, general public.

If you look at the population of Contours and Mystiques from a statistical standpoint, as organizations like JD Power and others did, there were more than the normal occurrence of initial defects and defects during the warranty period, and that's probably where the Black eyes in reliability and build quality came from for these cars.

Of course, it's now been 15 years since the last domestic model of either was produced and sold, so it's sort of beating a dead horse with a trumpet, and the longer you strive to keep one of these cars on the road, the more you become a slave to it. The cars in my sig (all of which I still own) say something about my willingness to be a slave to some of Ford's Red-headed step children, I'm intimately familiar with the psychosis.
 
Gmorrell is probably correct, of course, that as a whole Contours/Mystiques generally suffered from that mindset because of their issues when new. I sell parts for a living and all day have to listen to my most hated word; "cheapest" so I have an intimate first-hand knowledge of the type of repairs and general maintenance the general public preforms to their own vehicles so again, I tend to agree with him that most are poorly maintained, though I would argue the implication that CEGers tend to maintain their vehicles to a higher standard. :D

Being a Contour owner since early 2005 and working on multiple examples of the platform in multiple states of decay, I can say that there seems to be at least some correlation as to where they were built, and the overall quality and durability. Both my Contours came from the US, yet the ones I've seen with issues, tend to have been built in Mexico. My evidence is merely anecdotal, but I feel the build quality was held to a much higher standard on vehicles built in the US.

Having said that, my SVTF was built (as all Foci were) in Mexico, and it has nearly no faults I can attribute to the factory. This indicates that after the CDW-27 was through, standards were raised in the Mexican plants and if that's true than either the Contour had a bad reputation due to timing, or it's bad reputation was a catalyst for changes to build quality that surely benefits most Ford models today.

My comment on the Mustang still stands, however, as that was one of the cheapest and most terrible interiors I have seen. Even the A/C vents on the dash looked like they would immediately snap if you thought about changing the direction of their flow.
 
The interior in my Contour has softer touch plastics and rattles less than my 2006 Volvo V50 wagon, which brand new would've cost over $30k.
 
The car line there was one that involved major changes for Ford as they were going from the old school platform of Tempo into the future with much more modern small 16 and 24 valve engines. The FWD was somewhat ironed out but still refinements to be made. The ATX used lowered the overall quality when thousands of them failed due to one part designed incorrectly and Ford way too slow to remedy that. The car was advertised as well as one of the first Ford 'world' cars, or one that could contain engine/trans and emission systems that could work in various countries with little change to the car as well as easy change from left hand to right hand steering.

I have pretty much bought that one car size since '88 and can see the incremental changes made in Tempo, Contour and later Focus. The early Focus is actually the cheaper made car as they refine to lower weight more and more by making the parts more and more insubstantial to still do the same job, a gas mileage thing. Two bolts holding parts turn into one bolt and a snap connector, that type of thing. As well, as you go through a single car model you find first year ones built somewhat better, as the car ages they compromise more and more parts to be cheaper, the parts can be looked at in the scrapyards to easily see that. They also increase more and more use of combined parts to make you buy big subassemblies rather than a single part to fix your problem, the whole industry is moving in that direction. Single parts sales do not support the big showrooms one must have to sell cars now. Look at the parts books now, literally a million single parts have disappeared to become part of other assemblies now.

I call the cars crackerbox ones but then all of them are getting that way now, but actually the Contour was a fairly solid platform. I liked the front unboltable subframe that is very stout and it adds to the cars' handling. Plastic? It's lightweight and can be snapped in place to stay (and rattle) as versus steel which often has to bolt in place. Look for that to increase even more in the future, they want to be able to snap the cars together on the line as much as possible, it lowers cost and complexity of assembly but it means more sensations of cheaper crap car as all those pieces then add to noise and breakage as the cars age. Figuring out how to recover those plastic parts when they break to avoid buying hugely overpriced new ones from the dealer since most not made by others is turning out to be one of the new world skills one develops to save huge amounts of cash outlay in maintenance costs.

You think Contours are cheap? Get a later Focus, they finally reduced the engine mount structure enough to produce tremendous problems with vibration at idle, Contours don't do that nearly so badly. Thousands of Foci with that problem, they rattle your face off at idle even the newer ones.

Pretty much anything to do with serviceability is out the window now. The OEM is more concerned now with how quick the part can be fastened to the car or the subassembly and longer times to service things means more money in dealer's pocket now. The dealer mechs are now treated like the normal public, they don't care about them. Lower hours in maintenance means less shop hours to charge for.

One thing I don't see mentioned a whole lot is the seeming use of plastics that have shorter life now, they biodegrade right on the cars to then crumble in pieces and that's not repairable. Some of the foams used on Focus now are biodegrading to dust in way less than a year and lots of appearance and rattle complaints over that. An environmental thing I'm sure but it has the added bad side effect of helping to retire the cars earlier when they get so many issues with broken plastic all over them. Most people view that as irritating enough to stack up and then they accept letting the car go to buy another even though all the issues may well be minor in the light of day. They CAN make plastics that would last longer (they have in the past) but it would seem that there is a concerted effort to make them shorter life, it sells more cars in the long run.

While the cars could be better, like someone else said, try working on say Chryslers and you will quickly come back to the Fords as much easier and cheaper to work on. Many of the minor engine issues there require disassembling half the engine to fix them and ridiculous. I sold parts too and some of those cars were horrible to work on, people asking how do I change this, and one look under hood and you found yourself just shaking your head in disgust. One reason why I only buy the 4 cylinder, better gas mileage but also lower cost to work on things, the engine parts are easier and cheaper to R&R.

They may be and are in some ways cheaply made but small cars like Contour will always give you more return on your dollar than the bigger finer cars do, and it only begins with the much lower starting price you pay for one.
 
(Untitled)

Because it's a boring looking underpowered car in an over saturated segment that was only around for a few years (in the U.S.) before the company gave up on it and put all efforts into top sellers only (smart choice/didn't need a bailout). Now the vast majority that you see on the road are beat to hell, and the ones you see for sale are dirt cheap.
Those of us who appreciate these cars tend to love DRIVING, and appreciate them for the driving experience. We also tend to have an understanding that replacing an alternator or a water pump or spark plugs from time to time doesn't make it a lemon.


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Compared to 85 hp. Pintos these are absolute whirlwinds at 130 hp. I drove both, LOL.
 
My contour SVT is a 1999 with rust on the gun rails and the rest of the car looks OK(slowly addressing rust and original owner). That said my engine has 180000 and changed clutch at 175000. Never changed any sensors and runs fine. I did have a check engine light on for a few years that affected idle but fixed that and not due to ford.Great Duratec. Looking to hit 200000.
 
I've experienced all of the following personally on my one 1995 Contour, none of this is made up:

1) Cheapo rear sway bar brackets, tend to snap off under normal use, ask me how I know (using two bolts per side would have cost too much),
2) cheapo glued on plastic feature that keeps front sway bar from moving to one side and dragging the frame (yep, one of the first things I fixed),
2) cheapo temperature blend door control potentiometer (on both the original and p&p parts the resistive film totally failed, making vent air and ac blended air 10 or 15 degrees too hot),
3) cheapo electric wire insulation (insulation falls off of engine wiring in great huge flakes - yes, that is the wiring that fires injectors, coils, etc, power wire to ABS runs down battery in wet weather),
4) cheapo plastic wheel that controls seat back angle until it falls off,
5) cheapo head rests that have no strength, just flop back and forth
6) cheapo plastic that the dome light is molded out of, falls apart.
7) cheapo plastic speakers that just stop working before the rest of the car
8) cheapo paint that does not last worth a darn, clear coat peels in big flakes, then the base coat turns to chalk, then body panel rusts (the sun is more potent in my part of the world than Detroit).
9) cheapo positive battery post clamp that cracks, simulates bad battery.
10) cheapo ventilation fan speed control switch, fails, then does not run fan on all speeds.
11) cheapo clear resin in headlamp enclosures, turns milky, renders low beam brightness to something like a dim candle.
12) cheapo plastic odometer gear that falls to pieces, then no more odometer.

I may have forgotten a few, this is just a quick rundown.

On the other hand, I love the small displacement DOHC V6, it is smooth and high revving, I like the 5 speed MTX, AC works nicely now after new potentiometer, I'm firing up the welder/grinder/drill/tap etc to repair/replace sway bar brackets, along with urethane bushings, odometer once again functions with new gear. I'm also working through replacing the wiring, in steps, and parts from P&P's are plentiful and cheap.

And, the forum is a great place for maintenance information, very very helpful

And yes, the price was, in a word, cheap, $750 for relatively low mileage car. I like it, and will suffer through setting it back to right.
 
Some things could be seen as cheap, however at this age a lot of it could just be age.

1) I would blame rust for the failure not the design under normal use. I do not recall reading about failures otherwise.
2) must have been a design change, all the ones I have seen are press fit on. now I did have them split off on my 95 Mystique
2) I have never heard of this as a problem before. After 20 years of interior heat and use I could see an issue
3) I don't know if I would say check or poor material selection. Either way there was a recall for this.
4) Never had an issue with our two 95's, possible that abuse caused the wheel to fall off?
5) just sounds like they have worn out. The head rests always stayed put and no one else has complained about this
6) I think this is from the heat ... not to say the material couldn't be better
7) most stock speakers are cheap ....
8) no reports of paint issues for pre-98s. chances are the paint was not taken care of.
9) I would take this as people over tightening the clamp and causing the clamp to fail. This was most often caused by smaller than stock battery terminals
10) There was a recall of the fan switch and resistor.
11) all cars from the 90's had issues with yellowing or milky headlights.
12) isolated issue, never heard reports of odometer gear problems, again age and heat would be the issue here.
 
Buy a Focus, anything cheap on these Contour gets even worse on them. I have been watching the changes of this same size car through many years now starting with '88 Tempo/Topaz to Contour then Focus, they have gone downhill steadily in the solidness and quality of the cars long term. New the later ones seem great until the myriad nuisance issues show up and getting to where you can't keep count of them all. The engine/trans last forever but it's like they are cheapening the rest of the car to make so many issues you get rid of them over all the minor faults rather than because they wore out.

Look close and you can easily pick up on redesigned parts now to INTENTIONALLY break faster, they are not even concealing it any longer. The engineers are now being used to limit how long many of the parts last, never thought I'd see it but now it's all over the cars. And more and more you see the unified parts theory in effect pushing people to get rid of cars because the smaller number of parts is so much more expensive. Like early Focus $125 door latch assemblies turning into $400 for same part on '12 and later. Part ONLY, never mind the install cost. They are unitizing much smaller individual parts into much bigger multipart assemblies to make you buy many parts you don't need to get the one you do. I can't wait to have to buy a complete engine just to get spark plugs.............
 
That's been an issue since the feds mandated the dash has to be soft enough to lower impact injury to occupants. The 3 car lines I mentioned all do it with enough time in the heat. What you get with foam underlayment below the plastic, it all moves around under heat to split.

Off subject but the old MII had one dash feature I'd love to see other Fords use, the top of dash came off all the way down to expose most stuff under it for much easier maintenance, never seen another car do that before or since. Can't see why they didn't do a lot more of that...................
 
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