Faults:

Now let's be fair to begin with... I am going to begin this review with the facts that every Ford product I have ever owned has been given to me, and every Ford I have owned has been abused, and most of the things that went wrong were due to abuse. OK now...

Head gaskets blew twice.

Lost the alternator twice.

Transmission slips.

What were Ford thinking when they engineered the automatic seatbelts?

The rear axle makes this horrible grinding noise.

The rear disc brakes have given me a hard time.

General Comments:

Well, I can honestly say that from what I have dealt with from Ford, a lot of this cars woes were caused by the people that owned it before me. However... The things that went wrong with it can definitely be attributed to Ford's lack of testing and engineering. WOAH WHOAH Ford guys, let me explain...

I have owned a 93 Crown Victoria that I put over 60 thousand miles on previous to owning this Cougar, and I loved that car. My father in law has owned a few Crown Vics, and my best friend who is a police officer trusts the Crown Vic with his life. You can see that car used for the police and taxi services why? Because it is a well made, well engineered car.

This Cougar was quite the opposite. It has great lines, it is very comfortable, the steering is tight, and it handles well in bad weather, so those things are good about it. This is proof Ford can make a good dependable car. BUT that 3.8 liter V6 has had problems since the day it was designed with its headgaskets, and Ford had known about the problem and seemingly done nothing about it. I mean the headgaskets are a big thing to go when you don't have a lot of money. It's either fix the car or junk it. And from what I have been told, it is quite common for that to happen every 70 thousand miles. Aluminum heads on a cast iron block with not the greatest design, will get you every time.

And all of the small annoying things broke on the car; panels, the auto seatbelt, and the windows don't go down or up correctly. The auto seatbelts are just unnecessary, and when they fail they are an expensive pain in the behind to fix or replace.

I fell in love with the car when it was given to me, and then it fell apart, so unfortunately it's on the way to the junk yard. If it wasn't for the stupid stuff, I'd recommend this car to anyone. Leave it to Ford to go 3/4 the distance with a car.