The seat bottoms, however, came up short in the way of under-thigh support, an irritant magnified by a five-hour drive. The front seats are heavily padded buckets whose backs grasp your body like a reassuring hand. Rows of vertical padding provide shoulder support but interfere slightly with the installation of a child seat.įolding the back seat forward opened up enough space to carry a bicycle inside. I put in a child safety seat it touched the front seat backs. Even though the back seat was configured to add a couple more inches of kneeroom for 1997, it is still fairly snug. Lack of space in back is one of the Contour’s only drawbacks. With a little concentration you can match your shifts so perfectly that passengers might think they’re riding in an automatic, a fact pointed out by some friends riding in the back seat one night.įortunately, these friends were not large, and they found the back seat acceptable for an hour-long ride. The lightened flywheel lets the engine rev quickly, and the cable shift linkage has been revised for a more direct feel. The SVT is one of the sweetest-shifting cars I can remember. Ford says its 76.6 horsepower-per-liter output is the highest of any engine manufactured in North America. The standard 2.5-liter Duratec V6 is a nice unit when stock, but SVT bumped its horsepower up to 195 by adding a larger throttle body, lighter flywheel, conical air filter, larger radiator, oil cooler and higher compression pistons. The heart and soul of the SVT Contour is its engine and gearbox. Their job is to create limited-production models that appeal to driving enthusiasts, and I think this one adheres to their philosophy of balanced performance even better than the Mustang Cobra. How did this jewel come to fruition? The gearheads at Ford SVT (Special Vehicle Team) snared Ford’s European-bred Contour, tweaked its handling, added more power, bolted in leather seats and slipped fat tires on 16-inch wheels, creating a bargain-basement BMW with a 143-mph top speed. It follows your lead like it is telepathic. Head out to the countryside and it tracks through twisty two lanes like a Beagle nosing a rabbit’s scent. It romps through the gears with the kind of enthusiasm usually found only in high-dollar European sports sedans. Deeper fascias front and rear, dual exhausts, fog lights and five-spoke wheels are the only tip off that this is a special model.Ĭonsidering its price of $22,900, it is the performance bargain of the year. It is the perfect stealth-mobile because it looks much like the standard-issue Contour. In spite of its sedate profile and seats for four, this much-modified Contour, built exclusively at Ford’s Kansas City Assembly Plant in Claycomo, is more of a sports car than a family sedan.
Waiting for it to enter the trailer was sad because this little hot rod and I had become fast friends in the last four months, thanks to its hyperactive V6 engine, 195 horsepower and a slick-shifting gearbox.
This specific car, a hand-assembled prototype, built before actual production had begun, was not a “real” car and destined to have a limited life span.ĭid it represent a regular production car? If anything, it would be less reliable, less tight, but it was none of those things. That’s right, a perfectly good automobile had come to the end of its line. Its tenure in our household had expired, and it was heading back to the motor city where it would be scrapped. Only the Contour wouldn’t come back.įord agreed to an extended-use evaluation of the car because living with one reveals much more than a week-long test drive.
#FORD CONTOUR SVT DRIVER#
As I stood in the darkened shopping center parking lot waiting for the truck driver to load the red SVT Contour into his covered transporter for its final trip back to Detroit, I felt like a dad sending his kid off to college.
0 kommentar(er)
