This Ford was the first new car I bought, trading in the Volvo T5-R. I test drove an Acura Integra (nice gearbox, but sort of boring), the hot at the time Civic (wrong size for my body), and a Mercury Cougar (I thought it looked kind of cool, but was maybe too weird for me). All the sudden, every Ford dealer had a couple of Contour SVTs on the lot. I took a test drive. It was fun to drive, had plenty of space, and the engine noise came in a solid second place for 2.5 V6s I’ve owned. Ideally, I would have preferred a green one. This statement is true for almost all cars I’ve owned that were not green. The black exterior didn’t harmonize with the midnight blue interior – why didn’t they offer a black interior? And, being a Ford, I hoped it was a ticket out of the high dollar maintenance of the Volvo. It was. During its time with me, it only asked for a fuel pump outside of cheap oil changes. As a bonus, the pump was kind enough to fail a block from home, and 30 miles away from warranty expiration.

The dealer taped a 2000 Susan B Anthony dollar to the owner’s manual, and a certificate of authenticity and SVT Owners Association hat came in the mail a couple of weeks later. You know you’ve got something special when you have a certificate of authenticity, though I doubt many folks were counterfeiting SVT Contours.

I sold it a family that were replacing another Black over Midnight Blue SVT Contour that belonged to a family member. I think that was the last time I sold a car over the curb, and it was reasonably painless.