Ask your wife, when she sees pop message about contacts download starting, look at her phone notifications - she should see request to "Allow" contacts to sync with a car. It should be allowed ( of course, only if she wants phone contacts being available to use in the car, while driving). Moreover, she should check a box - something like "Allow each time" or whatever message is - to make this permission permanent. I can only think that either she made some change(s) in the phone settings or there was security update that affected this connection or else. I don't know if your wife's phone is Android phone or iPhone - so, she would need to find the notification area on the phone.