Through the application of a little money and a skilled mechanic, the Contour is up and running again. It seems to be behaving better than it was last year, so I'm hopeful for a long year of nice stereo music and smaller gasoline bills.
Willie's car is known in our house as "the spaceship" for reasons which are a whole other story. When we got the Ford Explorer from my father-in-law, we marveled at its size and took to calling it "the monster truck". That left my aging, but once very powerful V6 Sport edition Ford Contour with no good nickname.
Yesterday, when we were going to pick it up from the mechanic, Willie called "the hot rod". I like it! It was a very sporty car... eleven years ago. Now it's a shadow of its former self, but hopefully it still has a number of good years left in it.