{"id":756,"date":"2007-09-07T00:08:25","date_gmt":"2007-09-07T04:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/oddplanet\/2007\/09\/07\/time-to-trade-in-our-ford-contour\/"},"modified":"2011-10-01T23:18:07","modified_gmt":"2011-10-02T03:18:07","slug":"time-to-trade-in-our-ford-contour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/oddplanet\/2007\/09\/07\/time-to-trade-in-our-ford-contour\/","title":{"rendered":"Time to trade in our Ford Contour"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--CusAds--><p>Well it looks like it&#8217;s time for my wife and I to look for a new car.  It&#8217;s not like our car&#8217;s broken down or anything like that, it&#8217;s just that our Ford Contour is 11 years old and we think it&#8217;s time to trade it in while it&#8217;s still in good shape and running well.<\/p>\n<div class=\"b1291d92551e5c93995fce7897ccfc30\" data-index=\"2\" style=\"float: right; margin:10px 0 10px 10px;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"pub-3375789278566919\";\r\n\/* OddPlanet_300x250_inpost *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"3290981241\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 300;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 250;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\n<\/div>\n\n<p>We haven&#8217;t had our Ford since &#8217;96, no, we bought it used in the year 2000 I believe.  Prior to that we&#8217;d had two hand me down cars that my parents had been kind enough to give to us when we needed a car so our Contour was the first car that either of us had ever owned.<\/p>\n<p>Our Used Ford is a four cylinder.  We&#8217;re mostly city drivers &#8211; occasionally driving a few hours out of town here and there, but the majority of our driving is short trips within the city so we didn&#8217;t need to purchase a car with a powerful engine. Believe me, 4 cylinders is enough and we get great gas millage too.<\/p>\n<p>My wife really didn&#8217;t like the other two cars we had.  The first car was an old Buick and it had very loose power steering among a number of other problems so she didn&#8217;t drive it much.  The second car was a Prelude and while we both enjoyed that car ours was a standard and she had never drove a standard before and uh I was pretty lazy about getting around to teaching her so she never did drive that car.  Believe me, she never let me forget that!<\/p>\n<p>So our Contour, which we&#8217;d purchased at one of the local Ford Dealers from a friend who works there as one of the top salesmen, is an automatic.  The wife was adamant that we had to buy a car that she felt comfortable driving. The car actually handles really well. The steering is tight, but smooth.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve never had any major problems with this car either.  No engine trouble, no electrical problems &#8211; nothing big.  Just a few small problems.<\/p><!--CusAds-->\n<p>For example, we just had part of the manifold replaced. We had a hole in the manifold for oh about a year.  Man we had a noisy muffler as a result.  Unfortunately we were originally told that to repair the hole in the manifold that they&#8217;d have to replace the whole thing and it was going to cost about $1200 &#8211; money we didn&#8217;t have at the time.  Finally, about a month ago when our muffler was making a deafening sound we folded and I took it in to be repaired and the mechanic discovered that the hole could be replaced with a small replacement part.  It was still expensive to have the work done, but only about a third of the price we&#8217;d originally been quoted.<\/p>\n<p>Other minor problems we&#8217;ve had with Ford Contour were a problem with the ball bearings in the wheel freezing up on us when we were on a road trip, and the mechanism inside the door that holds the passenger side window in place broke a couple of years ago resulting in a window that wouldn&#8217;t go up anymore.  We had both problems fixed quickly and easily.<\/p>\n<p>Considering we&#8217;ve had our 11 year old car for seven years we&#8217;ve had very few problems.  I&#8217;ve been really happy with the car.  Did I mention that it doesn&#8217;t even have any rust on it even though it&#8217;s a 100% outdoor car even during our cold winter months?  Both of our other Used Cars had quite a bit of rust so I&#8217;m really surprised that this one doesn&#8217;t have any.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll start looking for a replacement car soon.  I think we&#8217;ll try to get through the winter with the Ford and then start looking for a new or another used car in the Spring.  Since we&#8217;ve had a good experience with the Contour we might end up getting another Ford. I guess it will depend on pricing and whichever car we like best when we are shopping for another car.<\/p>\n<!--CusAds--><p>Anyone else drive a Ford Contour?  If you do have you had a good experience with yours?<\/p>\n<div class=\"b1291d92551e5c93995fce7897ccfc30\" data-index=\"9\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<br\/>\r\n<div align=\"center\">\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"><!--\r\ngoogle_ad_client = \"pub-3375789278566919\";\r\n\/* OddPlanet_300x250_underpost *\/\r\ngoogle_ad_slot = \"8431788844\";\r\ngoogle_ad_width = 300;\r\ngoogle_ad_height = 250;\r\n\/\/-->\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\"\r\nsrc=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\">\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br\/>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<br\/>\r\n\r\n<?php if ( is_search() || is_single() || is_page() || is_paged() || is_category() || is_archive() ) { ?>\r\n<div align=\"center\">\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\">\r\n  ( function() {\r\n    if (window.CHITIKA === undefined) { window.CHITIKA = { 'units' : [] }; };\r\n    var unit = {\"calltype\":\"async[2]\",\"publisher\":\"dragonden\",\"width\":550,\"height\":250,\"sid\":\"oddplanet\",\"color_site_link\":\"cf4343\",\"color_text\":\"333333\"};\r\n    var placement_id = window.CHITIKA.units.length;\r\n    window.CHITIKA.units.push(unit);\r\n    document.write('<div id=\"chitikaAdBlock-' + placement_id + '\"><\/div>');\r\n}());\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"\/\/cdn.chitika.net\/getads.js\" async><\/script>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<?php } ?>\r\n<br\/>\r\n<br\/>\n<\/div>\n\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Well it looks like it&#8217;s time for my wife and I to look for a new car. It&#8217;s not like our car&#8217;s broken down or anything like that, it&#8217;s just that our Ford Contour is 11 years old and we think it&#8217;s time to trade it in while it&#8217;s still in good shape and running [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[40,25,50,31],"tags":[2998,447,184,109,110,111,2999,1888,429,3000,3001,3002,900,186,705,469,5575,121,1156,2851,3003,191],"class_list":{"0":"post-756","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-home-and-lifestyle","7":"category-recreation","8":"category-services","9":"category-shopping","10":"tag-4-cylinders","11":"tag-city","12":"tag-door","13":"tag-drive","14":"tag-driver","15":"tag-driving","16":"tag-ford","17":"tag-ford-contour","18":"tag-gas","19":"tag-good-gas-milliage","20":"tag-handles-well","21":"tag-no-problems","22":"tag-outdoor","23":"tag-purchase","24":"tag-quote","25":"tag-repair","26":"tag-shopping","27":"tag-uk","28":"tag-used-car","29":"tag-used-cars","30":"tag-vcars","31":"tag-window","32":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/oddplanet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/oddplanet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/oddplanet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/oddplanet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/oddplanet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/oddplanet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/oddplanet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/oddplanet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/feverishthoughts.com\/oddplanet\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}