The Ford Tempo is one of those awkward points in automotive history. While the Tempo was a just fine, if not disposable vehicle, it generally did not live up to its name. Few would imagine such a machine being the four-wheeled embodiment of setting and keeping pace, as most Tempos have long since lost their tempo and faded into oblivion. Of the Tempos that remain today, the majority of them are beaten down with their best days perhaps decades behind them. Here’s one Tempo that someone managed to keep in perfect shape. There’s a 1990 Ford Tempo out there with all of just 22,923 miles on its odometer and it looks like it rolled out of a dealership yesterday. It’s even more impressive once you find out just where the car is.
The subject of car preservation is an interesting one. There seems to be no shortage of people willing to preserve history’s most famous vehicles. It’s not hard to find someone saving a classic Porsche 911 or most generations of the Chevrolet Corvette. There are museums filled to the brim with the icons.
Regular cars aren’t often afforded the same luxuries of cherished lives. Instead, they’re usually used up, beaten, crashed, and rusted out before being retired to the great junkyard in the sky. Who knows how many models have gone extinct because nobody bothered to save a single example?
It’s sad because while so many of us dream of the unattainable, cars like the Ford Tempo carry people of all stripes millions and millions of miles. Countless snapshots of life’s moments are created in regular cars from the night couples fall in love to learning of big promotions, pregnancies, or just a big personal win. These cars are also there during those dark and rainy days when you just need to cry. Sure, a Ford Tempo may not be historically significant, but even boring cars are worth saving.
Competitive, But Dull
Ford of the late 1970s and early 1980s decided to reinvent itself. As Popular Mechanics wrote, the company entered the then-new decade by downsizing its lineup while also adopting a curvy, futuristic corporate aesthetic. Ford also followed the technology of the times, eschewing classic rear-wheel-drive platforms for new and snazzy front drivers. The Ford Tempo and its Mercury Topaz sibling were designed to replace the old and blocky Ford Fairmont and Mercury Zephyr. My retrospective continues:
Development began in the late 1970s and a focus on the new compacts was on aerodynamics. As Popular Mechanics wrote, in 1978, the Tempo and Topaz were subject to wind tunnel testing. The vehicles spent over 450 hours in the wind tunnel getting their bodies sculpted to cut through the air. As a result, Ford made over 950 design changes to achieve a slippery profile. The finished product had aircraft-inspired doors that wrapped into the roof and featured a windshield and back window angled at 60 degrees.
In the end, Ford’s engineers achieved a drag coefficient of 0.36 for the coupe and 0.37 for the four-door. The coupe’s drag coefficient was equal to the day’s Thunderbird.
Those aren’t that impressive by today’s numbers, but remember, these are inexpensive compacts developed in the late 1970s. Popular Mechanics went on to note that the Tempo and Topaz slipped through the air better than GM’s J-car competition and completely blew Chrysler’s K-cars out of the water. The magazine also saw the Tempo and Topaz sedans going up to bat against imports like the Honda Accord, Mazda 626, Nissan Stanza, and Toyota Corona, while the coupes would go up against the Honda Prelude, Nissan 200SX, and Toyota Celica.
Despite the paragraphs above, the Tempo and Topaz were dynamically about as dull as dishwater. MotorWeek‘s John Davis, a man who usually finds something nice to say about every car, fired off a shot of his own: “[T]hey also have a reputation for performance and styling that are as exciting as watching ice melt.”
In 1988, Ford launched the second generation of these cars, which birthed the gold car you see today. The second-generation cars do look a bit more contemporary, but most Tempos kept the beat slow with 60 mph acceleration times in the mid-12 second range and needed about 19 seconds to complete a quarter mile.
That being said, Ford reportedly did such a good job with the second-generation car’s handling that one tester at MotorWeek likened the cornering performance to that of a Honda Prelude. Granted, I doubt anyone cross-shopped a Tempo with a Prelude. Ford also pumped up the Tempo with the availability of a 3.0-liter Vulcan V6. Sure, the engine was good for all of 130 HP, or 40 more than the lower four, but that was enough to drop the 60 mph acceleration time to 7.8 seconds and the quarter mile to 16.1 seconds. Add in the supposedly good handling and Ford may have created quite the underdog.
But the vast majority of the 1,565,047 Ford Tempos sold between 1988 and 1994 were not spicy at all. Most of them were like the car you see today.
A Look Into The Past
This 1990 Ford Tempo didn’t light the world on fire when it was new. It’s a GL model, which slotted in between the more sporty GLS and the more luxurious LX. In other words, it wasn’t the best Tempo on sale in its day.
Up front sits a 2.3-liter High Swirl Combustion four making a reasonable 98 horsepower and drinking from fuel injection. Ford’s advertised highlights for the GL model were its independent suspension, rack and pinion steering, and standard electronic AM/FM radio. This car appears to have the Preferred Equipment Package 226A, which adds air-conditioning, a tilt steering wheel, a rear window defroster, power locks, and power mirrors, but not power windows. Another option this car has is a three-speed automatic. A standard Tempo GL ran $9,483 ($23,947 today) in 1990, but this one was optioned up to a price of $11,749 ($29,669 today).
After tax and document fees, the original owner drove out of the Reynolds Motor Co. showroom on September 11, 1989, after paying $12,495.75 ($31,555 today). The car had all of 14 miles on its odometer that day and it was built only the month before.
I’ve pulled the car’s history and it gives us only some parts of the puzzle. This car has lived in Illinois for all of its life, staying closer to the Mississippi near the dealership in Moline. The Tempo stayed with its first owner until 2004. Then, the car was sold to a second owner. Unfortunately, Illinois does not require odometer tracking for old cars, so the mileage trail died immediately after the vehicle was first titled.
That second owner held onto the Tempo until 2019, when they sold it to the present owner. Somehow, through all of this time and three recorded owners, nobody ever drove the car further than 22,923 miles. Amusingly, when I pulled a CarFax on this vehicle, the site’s mileage estimator thought this car should have closer to 474,000 miles. The CarFox is certainly ambitious!
Sometimes it’s hard to believe a low mileage claim but that’s not the case here. This car has basically no wear to be found. The pedals don’t show wear from being pounded by shoes for hundreds of thousands of miles. The seats aren’t stained by color transfer from pants or from drink spills. The backseat doesn’t even look like it was ever sat in.
Look at that center console and that steering wheel. You can tell change hasn’t rattled around in the bins and the wheel is unburdened from grubby hands messing it up over three decades of time. The paint is also in remarkable shape, hinting that this vehicle was probably garaged for the vast majority of its life. Even cars in the western portion of Illinois get catastrophic rust and this one just doesn’t have that.
I reached out to the seller for more information. As of publishing time, I did not get anything back.
Perhaps one of the coolest parts about this whole deal is that the seller is being realistic about this car’s value. Yes, it’s perhaps one of the most perfect Tempos you’ll ever see that’s still in private hands. Yet, it’s still a Tempo, so even a perfect one isn’t exactly worth a ton of money. This seller, located in Geneseo, Illinois, wants just $5,000 for it. I think that’s more than reasonable, if not close to “screw it” money for some people.
If you buy this car, I think you have one of two paths. You could drive it and get to experience what it was like to own a new car in 1989. Or, maybe you could continue this car’s path and keep it in time capsule condition. Maybe you could even open up your own museum of mundane cars like the awesome Crazy ’80s Car Museum that I visited earlier this year.
Either way, I’m glad this car exists. I’m happy someone didn’t drive this car. As time goes on, memories fade, and regular cars disappear, preserved examples like this Tempo can bring back a lot of memories. For that alone I think it’s worth the price of admission.
Hat tip to Marcus C!
(Images: RobertSue on Facebook.)
I know three people who owned Tempos.
1) A university buddy’s dad worked for Ford, and got a V6 Tempo on A-Plan. It took questionable handling and added a lot of weight over the front wheels. At least it had torque.
2) A friend bought one for a daily 1-hour plus highway commute. Each weekend her boyfriend would spend a couple of hours fixing the car. I believe his exact words on the subject were “I hate that fucking thing.”
3) My wife was “gifted” (HA!) a Tempo for use commuting in the Greater Toronto Area. For a year, the “Lempo” as she called it, sucked up all of her disposable income to keep on the road. So, she bought a 2002 Sentra new, and returned the Lempo to her folks. They took it to a mechanic to get the once over and he said the transmission was going to die any day and it wasn’t worth fixing. They scrapped it after letting her put well over $3K into it.
As far as I am concerned, burn this thing with fire and piss on the embers.
Naw – save it for 90s movie sets
My grandparents in Toronto had a four-door Topaz in this color – I was told it was a ‘91, but it had the ‘92 faux-lightbar grill. It replaced a diesel Tempo, which replaced a diesel VW Rabbit. Anyway, this car brings back nostalgia of my parents and I being picked up by my grandparents at Pearson in the ‘90s and beginning of the ‘00s when we visited for New Year’s. When my grandfather was no longer able to drive, my cousin got the Topaz, and it was the subject of a hilarious speech at her wedding. She named the car “Toby” and then named her cat after it.
I drove two of these.. no wait… 3 of these for a total of a little over 200,000 miles worth of driving. Two 5 speed two doors and one 4 door automatic. The 5 speeds were kinda fun. They took an absolute beating without complaint. You could not kill them. I tried. Every single day my 5 speed cars saw 5500-6000 rpm at least 50-60 times. Red line was a suggestion and I met it often without regard or care. They were also unstoppable in the snow. One thing however, the ate exhaust systems. My exhaust was patched up more times than I can remember and also replaced a couple times.
I got rear ended in one of them by a guy going at least 30 mph and he never touched his brakes. I unbuckled and walked away. My Father owned a Ford dealership and this is what he put me in. Years later I asked him why. He replied. They were cheap. Dead reliable and not fast enough to get yourself in trouble with. And they got decent fuel economy.
The 2.3 HSC was used because Ford couldn’t build 2.3 Lima engines fast enough. Rhey need a 4 banger quuck and ir had to be cheap. So they loped 2 cylinders off a I6 (forget which one) and viola. The textbook definition of bland was born. It made a lot of noise at every RPM but never was fast. Like many Harley’s it was good at turning gasoline into noise and not much else.
Despite all that I had a lot of food times listening to good music and having “relations” on back rods in them. Ahh to be young.
I recall reading the engine was derived from the 6 developed in the late Fifties for the Falcon.
Yup. My mom had 2 hand-me-down Ford Escort vehicles from her parents when she was divorced and poor and had us – an 87 Escort wagon and a 91 Escort 4 door sedan.
Both were shitty but unkillable.
Pretty sure the 87 wagon had a headlight that would go out occasionally that was finally tracked down to a short in the wiring because of something with the power windows or mirror.
And the 91 had a bad transmission for at least a year and a half, but she still drove it…. Just more slowly. It would massively flare on upshifts and not always recognize 2nd gear, but the engine was so low power that it soldiered on anyway. The only reason she got rid of the ’91 was because someone died, she got some money, and bought an’ 02 Sonata with the 2.7L V6 that was perhaps even more unkillable. She put over 300k on that one without a timing belt change…. And it’s an interference engine. Craziness.
I think you found David’s wedding car.
I worked at a Ford dealer back when these cars were new, and we sold truckloads of them. I also thought the second gen coupes looked pretty good, and with a 5 speed they weren’t that bad to drive. The Contour was a better car but smaller and much more expensive, they sold poorly.
Love this, as an owner of a mint Pontiac Sunbird. Normal old cars miraculously in good shape is my forté.
I don’t trust you…. username is too on the nose, sir!
Technically, this is still a first generation Tempo, or, at most, a Mk1.5 – only the sedans were fully redesigned for the second generation, the first gen coupes carried over with only a fairly mild facelift to make them look more like the new sedans.
Personally, I love when people save mundane cars – my garage has a Rambler and a Corvair in it right now, two things you could barely give away for a long time, and which still aren’t worth much – so I do appreciate this, and the styling has aged well (looks better and better with each new gaping grilled, floating roof pillared, crazy side creased monstrosity that gets launched).
However, I will say, my parents had a first year Tempo sedan when I was a kid – dark brown with a bordello red interior – I remember the seats being very comfortable, but the interior was acres of cheap, brittle plastic and the thing was no end of trouble, always an open question whether we were getting home in the car or the cab of a tow truck.
Stranded us at Willow Grove Park Mall, Dutch Wonderland, and Ocean City, among other random places. My understanding is that it was mostly due to Ford’s baffling reluctance to go to fuel injection, resulting in an electronically controlled carburetor so overly complicated and simultaneously over-engineered and under-engineered that it could well have come from BMW.
Maybe they should have tried an awd version. Handles much better, and loves to drift if you go a little fast. High output engine too, way overcammed as it had no torque till 2,500 rpm or so then peak torque at redline. So rated at 100hp, but closer to 130hp at redline as real powerband looked nothing like the dynochart they printed. Think slow but faster than “faster” cars once moving.
I had a two-door Tempo of this vintage. It was fine: reliable, comfy, and ignorable (which is a good thing sometimes). As for the name, well, Ford just neglected to mention that the “tempo” to which it was referring was adagio.
I would love to learn the full story of why this car is so well preserved. There’s one in my neighborhood that’s collected moss from neglect, but it is still driving! Talk about getting your money’s worth
You see a nice clean car. I see a story.
The motorized seatbelts strangled the life from three different owners.
It’s amazing what can result when you keep a car clean, maintained and garaged.
Even when you have a Tempo.
I don’t get the hate on these cars. My ex had one with the 2.3L HSC and a 3A. I drove it everywhere from Sacramento to SJ to SD and it was a solid car, perfectly fine on long stretches of 70 mph highway. IMO it was slightly more refined (and stogy) than the Corolla of the time. No it wasn’t a canyon carver sports car or dragster, it was a small family car. It was reasonably comfortable and quiet at speed. One could do worse.
Its replacement, a Mazda 626 was a notch better but it was supposed to be better.
I rented a 4-door Tempo back when they were current, and it put me off Fords for years. I mean there’s “basic transportation”, and then there’s “contempt for the driving public”. This is the latter.
I liked the Tempo, and the Topaz. To my very-young eyes they were delightfully modern (not rolling rectangles) yet clearly a visual definition of “car”. They even had amber rear turn signals (on the Fords anyway, I think Mercury got red rear lights for some inexplicably-“premium” reason), though they should have been at the corners, not between the brake and reverse lights.
Would I buy one? Extremely unlikely. But I respect and somewhat admire them in their simplistic functionality.
I like mundane old cars. I think it’s the underdog syndrome that gets me unreasonably excited when I see a reasonably clean Chevette or K car these days.
Well put and me too. I think it’s the improbability of it all.
As is pointed out, any Corvette that’s not destroyed is slavishly preserved b/c “I know what I got!” but on the opposite end, so few people decide that their everyday car may be humble but it is theirs and they’re going to take care of it.
There is a mint Chevette near me with a very nice burnt orange paint job and sporting 4-lug Cragars. I keep riding by hoping to catch the owner outside so I can hear the story as it looks just like how an 80s teenager would have cruised our main drag in the day.
I saw a first generation Ford Escort the other day and nobody at the bar cared!
Philistines, right?
More than ten years ago a plan was hatched, I do not know if a US version could work but we have the FOTU, it has snags but here is a taste;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bU5kxyTWkRc
I’ve always said if I won the lottery I’d buy an air-cooled 911, a used pickup, a nice Kabota tractor, and then build a collection of oddballs and underdogs.
I don’t know if a Tempo would be in the collection, but bet your ass I’d search far and wide for the best black Dodge 600 ES ragtop in the land.
I would have a Chevette, a Pinto Rallye wagon—plus a Subaru GLF just for the nostalgia. And a Jubilee edition Ford 8N on tractor duty
The vintage tractor is a great idea. I do love a good tractor show, might as well get one and become a participant instead of just a spectator.
One of the best spectacles I ever beheld was a small classic tractor-pull at a local Apple Festival. Most people were polishing their tractors, but one was filing points on one that looked like it had been pulled from a bog: recent storms meant it had been pulling downed trees the previous day rather than being cleaned & tuned up. It won class in three rounds, operator and machine having worn-in together over long use, was loaded up & hauled off to finish up work.
A competent, classy lady, she first drove it at age 12, then took over the farm decades later, so every fraction of slop was muscle memory. When she shifted, she sawed the wheel just before clutching, took the slack back up, and the tractor barely shifted course.
I, on the other hand, once did a terrifying wheelie on a Jubilee: the slop takes serious getting used to
These cars are also there during those dark and rainy days when you just need to cry.
Exactly this!
Not all of life’s most powerful memories are the good ones. The break-ups, the trips to and from hospitals, funerals, etc…
But, they are part of what makes us who we are and they and the cars that were there with us in those times shouldn’t be forgotten.
Say what you want about the Tempo, but it’s a friggin coupe. And that’s cool.
As a member of the small cult of the sport coupe here, I feel the same way. Just the mindset back in the day of we’re going to take a practical everyday car and make it less so just so you can enjoy hints of a racer fantasy warms my heart.
It’s very small small-d democratic, the idea that fun and driving should be available for everyone who wants it, not restricted to rich people who can buy weekend toys. Those were the days.
Tempos were a car that can be described as being a car. A good car.
My favorite tempo story that Ive told- a friend had one of this era, a 4 door that he would boast only had 30,000 miles on it! A little old lady had it, he bought it for a steal. This was also the day of unlimited carfaxs. So I had carfax, he asked me to run one. Turns out that car had over 200,000 miles. He told me to never tell anyone. Sorry George. Im telling everyone here.
The other side of that, of course, is that it was apparently still nice enough to pull off the deception.
I know a lot of people love to hate on the Tempo/Topaz, but I’m firmly not one of them. The first gen is (IMO) a genuinely good-looking vehicle and even the 2nd gen is more attractive than the Contour or whatever replaced it. And the fact that the 1st-gen was available with AWD, diesel, or weirdly the 3.0V6 at various points means just for weirdness factor alone the Tempo is worth another look.
There’s a surprising number to 2nd gen’s running around in my area still. They’re mostly Mercurys, which either means these are granny cars that now have moved on to a second owner, or perhaps the light bar front end unlocks some secret cockroach/indestructibility cheat code. Jury’s still out.
I always thought the second gen looked, I dunno, crisper, than the kinda blobby first gen.
Looking them up, I guess what I’m most shocked at is that Ford sold them until 1994! I don’t recall them lasting that long, but there we have it.
V6 was wierd.
Weirdly optioned and stupid fast is all I recall. Like buy one if you wanted a SHO w 0 saftey.
If you spent any time driving a Tempo, you’ll understand why nobody wanted to drive this one, either.
We had a ’92 or ’93 ex-rental GLS. It was…fine. Smelled like stale french fries.
There was no Tempo that handled well. These are a larger “Erika” platform – so…Escort stuff. The Vulcan V6 went in in 1991 for the ’92 model year I think, and had a BUNCH more torque.
That “HSC” 2.3 was NOT the Lima 2.3. It was a pushrod 4 based on the old old old Thriftmaster six that debuted in the Falcon in ’60, which shocks me. I think the decision was to use the old six as a basis because of production constraints or tooling costs or something.
This is what replaced the fox-body Fairmont and it gets nowhere near the affection, for probably good reasons. It wasn’t even as good as its contemporaries, although it was a cheap enough, stiff-kneed, durable car. But looking at what Honda and Toyota were offering at the time, this is just so outclassed (that said, Hondas and Toyotas weren’t always easy to procure, and cost more)
I remember at the time wondering why Ford went to all the trouble of creating the HSC when the Lima 2.3 was already available and had more power. I remember C&D magazine trying to find something nice to say about that engine in one of their tech sidebar boxes.
More torque. Helps move its extra mass at 6k ft alt compared to the escort. Local dealer offered a tempo or escort for the same money.
That said thicker carpet and taller seatmounts might have helped, as my topaz was much more pleasant that the “sit on the floor w no insulation” tempo my sister had.
I Effing HATE these Tempo-Topaz cars!!
I’ll tell you why the mileage is so low and the condition so “nice”: No one wants to drive this thing, let alone even sit in it.
I am glad, however, that this particular car exists, in the same way I am glad that we have museums dedicated to historical atrocities. We must learn from history, or we are doomed to repeat it.
I’m still surprised he’s not here yet, from the old site, to talk rapturously about them. You know who I mean!
He hadn’t made an appearance at the old place for many years before the Autopian started.
Maybe this is bait to draw him out.
98mpg that’s nuts! And probably a typo.
Dang it! I’ll have that fixed. Not sure why I was thinking about fuel economy and not horsepower. I guess still not as bad as the time an editor’s goof at the old site resulted in perhaps the silliest headline to ever appear above my byline:
https://images-stag.jazelc.com/uploads/theautopian-m2en/Screenshot-1226.png
I mean w/ 31 hp, how could it not be a ‘drift machine’? 🙂
Maybe they couldn’t stay awake long enough?