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Consumer Guide® and others thought ZX2 a bit expensive for what it delivered: $12,580 base for a '98 without air conditioning. A brand new all-Ford design elective on lesser Contours, this engine made 170 spirited horses -- enough for Consumer Guide®'s five-velocity automotive to charge from zero to 60 mph in just 8.9 seconds. The first member of Dearborn's new "modular" engine household, it delivered 190 customary bhp or 210 with dual exhausts, a acquire of 40-50 horses over the old pushrod 302. The uprated engine was included in a Handling and Performance bundle that was normal for the Touring Sedan and non-obligatory on different models. Ford was more on target with a redesigned Escort that rang up more than 655,000 sales for model years 1997-98 and greater than 100,000 each for '99 and 2000. The previous Mazda Protege-based design returned with a clean new wrapper and a 110-bhp 2.0-liter single-cam Zetec 4-cylinder, thus ousting the previous CVH engine finally. Still, the Crown Vic had truthful thirst (about 17 mpg metropolis, 25 freeway, as rated by the Environmental Protection Agency) and was thus a drain on Ford's domestic fleet-common economy.