Ford 500 a good car ?

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sirgerman

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I am still looking for a car for my wife, My wife car is almost deae, is a 2002 Saturn, burns oil, the AC is broken, is making noise in the rear shocks, it has 190000 miles.
I promised my wife that I was going to buy another car.I was thinking about the cobalt, but I cant find one for the right price, what do you guys think about the ford 500 ? I want something that last like my previous saturn, I know a Japanese car is the answer but they are more expensive.
I found this one a good price and low miles

Mercury Montego
 
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That low mileage looks very nice and its a car few people look for. Its not a Camry or Accord so the sellers will have a harder time selling it, even in that nice condition. i think you could show up and do some real haggling on it.
 
They are nice cars but most of them have the CVT transmission that Ford played with for a while then abandoned. If you are not used to one they drive a bit different, also got mixed reviews on reliability of the CVT IIRC you might do a little research on that before you purchase.

Vulcan V6 is a great engine as mentioned.

Overall a much better car than a Cobalt IMO.
 
Originally Posted By: 19jacobob93
I believe they had the Vulcan V6 which is an excellent engine as far as V6s go, I've seen them with very high mileage having a pretty solid iron block and head


They actually had the 3.0 Duratec V6. At some point they went to a 3.5 Duratec V6.
 
They have the duratech twin cam 3.0, and either a cvt or 6 sp auto. Avoid the cvt. I could buy a low mileage one like in the ad, but not for $7,500. I would avoid a high mileage or less than pristine one altogether.
 
I like mine a lot. I just did an oil change today at 106,420 miles.

As said above it has the Duratec engine. Make sure you change the plugs around 90K.

Off the bat replace the strut arm bushing above the engine and replace the power steering fluid. Both are easy to do, follow the instructions here and here.
 
what is the gas mileage ? so no problems so far ? I am going to offer $6500 for it, I check online and so far no recalls for that car, I am impress
 
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Originally Posted By: Wolf359
Originally Posted By: 19jacobob93
I believe they had the Vulcan V6 which is an excellent engine as far as V6s go, I've seen them with very high mileage having a pretty solid iron block and head


They actually had the 3.0 Duratec V6. At some point they went to a 3.5 Duratec V6.

I thought the Duratec was introduced in 2008 but maybe I'm wrong! They weren't quite as durable as far as I understand but I don't know too much info on them
 
Duratech 3.0 was much earlier than 2008

IIRC it was available as an option on taurus in late 90's the base engine was the vulcan.

Google says it was in the ford 500 in 2004+
 
Well, that depends on how you drive the thing.

I can sit at 60mph on the interstate and get 34mpg but if you kick it up to 65-70 it will drop to the upper 20s pretty quickly. 60mph just seems to be the sweet spot in 6th gear. I am 330 miles into a good mix of city and with a 100 mile highway ish trip and the average for this tank is sitting at 23mpg.

I have pulled 631.5 miles once on 19.5 gallons of fuel, which is 32mpg over the whole trip, Madison WI to Rochester PA with ethanol free 87 fuel.

The other big thing is remove the throttle body and spray it down with TB cleaner and scrub it out with an old tooth brush. Surging has always been an ongoing issue but cleaning it every 20K or so miles pretty much solves the problem.

Stick with the Motorcraft FL-820s filter and a quality oil and change every 6,000 miles. I use the Motorcraft Synthetic Blend.

That is a very nice car for that price if you can get it. You will enjoy it a lot.


This is a graph of all my fuel purchases from 02/27/2008 when I purchased my car up to 12/23/2012. I just stopped entering them after that.

wtvd02.jpg
 
Originally Posted By: sirgerman
I am still looking for a car for my wife, My wife car is almost deae, is a 2002 Saturn, burns oil, the AC is broken, is making noise in the rear shocks, it has 190000 miles.
I promised my wife that I was going to buy another car.I was thinking about the cobalt, but I cant find one for the right price, what do you guys think about the ford 500 ? I want something that last like my previous saturn, I know a Japanese car is the answer but they are more expensive.
I found this one a good price and low miles

Mercury Montego


I gave $5K for our 2006 500 18 Jan 2016 it was clean with 110K miles but with slick tires.

A desert version if paint is nice with 48K miles in very nice condition $7500 is not over the top.

We flushed our six speed transmission in the drive way using the cooling lines at the cooler. After 5 K miles I still love the car. Drove it in single digit temp the third week we had it on a trip to MN. You have to get your toe into it to merge, etc but it will run. WOT shifts are at 6200 RPM.
 
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Originally Posted By: 901Memphis
Looks good for the mileage but you can probably do better. They are big and heavy though and feel like it


I am open to suggestion, the car I really want is a cobalt, is the closest thing to a Saturn sl, but I am not able to find anything so far
 
Originally Posted By: sirgerman
I am still looking for a car for my wife, My wife car is almost deae, is a 2002 Saturn, burns oil, the AC is broken, is making noise in the rear shocks, it has 190000 miles.
I promised my wife that I was going to buy another car.I was thinking about the cobalt, but I cant find one for the right price, what do you guys think about the ford 500 ? I want something that last like my previous saturn, I know a Japanese car is the answer but they are more expensive.
I found this one a good price and low miles

Mercury Montego

Those cars are solid performers. They got stellar scores on the jd power 3 year dependability study.
Low miles, just have it checked out before you buy and definitely get the car fax first too
 
This is from the ford come back era along with the fusions and milans and new tauruses. Ford really got it right there.
 
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