This may be a car you consider boring – and with good reason – but there are at least two weird things going on on this brochure cover. The first is pretty obvious: 1986 1/2? You don’t see carmakers doing the half-year thing that often, unless there’s some really major change that has to happen right then and there, bit I can’t figure out what that would be on the Topaz here. Sure, they went through a big refresh in 1986, getting those composite headlights and moving to fuel injection from carburetors, but these all happened in ’86, so what happened in, I guess, June of that year?
The other thing is the name: we always called the Ford version of this car the Tempo in America, and the Mercury version was the Topaz. But, in Mexico, everything was different. Chairs sat on people, breakfast was for dinner, and they called the car the Ford Topaz. Mind-scrambling, right?
Oh, and I learned one other Tempo/Topaz thing: there was this early commercial where a Tempo does a full vertical loop:
… according to the March 1984 issue of Popular Mechanics, that Tempo in the ad was secured to the track, and pulled through the loop. It’s a lie! If you bought a Tempo to do loop-do-loops you were had, people! Where’s the class action lawsuit?
Mrs Ocean had an 87 Topaz, bought new before she became Mrs Ocean. She plumped for the extended (to 50k) warranty. Said Topaz shit its transmission at 49,800 miles. Apart from that, it was a reasonable transportation appliance.
Can Vouch for Ford trying the half thing all through the 80s. We bought my wife a 83 1/2 Ford Escort coupe. LX I believe in 2009. It had 46k original miles on the 1.5L carbed engine. And a Auto. Honest to God … That little shit box was great. Dangerous AF, but a hoot to drive max push