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.)
That price isn’t bad for the shape and what it is. I was scanning through FaceClub Marketcrap the other day and came across a Civic DX I think, can’t remember the year or anything but it was a red hatch. Stick and looked pretty clean. Had like 227k on it and they wanted $27,700 for it. I almost messaged them to ask if they threw an extra 0 on by accident.
I wish we could buy this for Tempo Fan. I wonder how he/she is doing. Also, mom had one, what a miserable POS.
You know when people ask if you’d like to go back in time and do it all over again? Not me, I don’t want to live through seeing these things again.
I love seeing ‘survivor’ examples of common cars like this, and was super excited to see the pictures…until I saw the motorized belt. Yikes. One of my aunts had a wagon equipped with those things; I hated them. (Yes, child-me was often placed in the front seat back in the day.)
Some versions of the Tempo/Topaz were (relatively) interesting: the AWD models, and the V6/5-speed equipped GLS and XR5, specifically. This isn’t one of them, but interesting as a true survivor, which I appreciate. The 2-door 2.3/automatic GL was the price leader at almost every Ford dealer in 1994, advertised with a lower price than even Escorts as the stores were moving metal to make way for the Contour. It truly was the ultimate throwaway car.
I have not been nor can I confirm, but it woudn’t surprise me if a Tempo existed in the LeMay / America’s Car Museum in Tacoma WA; they have a bunch of normie cars.
Mercury Topaz might be the best name for a drag queen ever! WELCOME TO THE STAGE…MERCURY TOPAZ!
I think there should be a Museum of Everyday Cars, for the very reasons you stated.
I can personally tell you that the Jackie Stewart commercial sold at least one Tempo (yeah, it was the first gen and the one in question is a second gen; just go with it). When it was time to let our eighth gen Thunderbird go, my dad was open to a first gen Tempo partially because Jackie was in the commercial.
https://youtu.be/F_I0jQHAJC0?si=JAOzFUxxDFQ93FWY
I still give him shit about it to this day…
My issues with the Tempo, when taken individually, are kind of petty. But taken all together it made me really dislike the car. I never owned one but rode to high school every day for 2 years in the back seat of one.
It was kind of impressive just how shitty they were…
It’s like if you considered every aspect of a vehicle and intentionally collected the second worst examples and made a car out of those…
came here for this, I road in them all the time, I can still hear the engine noise and lack of grunt lol
That said, I drove one once with the 3.0 Vulcan and it solved my biggest complaint about the car, which was the engine.
Some Tempos had fabric/vynil door cards.
Yeah I think the older ones and/or the Topaz got a nicer interior treatment. The one I was most familiar with was a GL that actually had most equipment you’d want like power everything but those plastic doors, ugh.
You forgot one:
5. They ate tie rod ends. My ’86 required a new set about once a year.
It’s minty.
This lands squarely in the wheelhouse of my car fetish. I live for and love the econobox, the entry-level, the stripped model. Not because you can beat on them with little fear of remorse – I never stop feeling the original expenditure. Pay as little as possible, and then stretch that expense to just shy of the elastic limit. Always give a little room for it to recover.
Enthusiasts get far too excited (in my opinion) about the lofty and unattainable supercars, the luxury rides, the wild concepts. Those are fun for flights of fancy, but what about when it comes time for you and your meager means to go somewhere? That’s where the real genius comes to light: how good were the engineers able to make the car that they were trying to save every penny on? What got included, what got left out? And why? It’s a journey of technological and anthropological discovery as we dig into what matters and what’s valuable. I love the basics, they are a far more telling peek at what motorists value when the value for money is the most important metric.
Clearly this particular carbuyer didn’t value driving places very highly, but nevertheless wasn’t going to squander the value they paid for. Seeing this bottom-tier example so carefully preserved, it’s obvious they didn’t go very far very often, even if they wanted to retain the option of going somewhere at any time. That’s the function cars fill. At the end of over thirty years, this owner didn’t need to fulfill it much.
Five grand? For what is a virtually new car? Easy sale. The engine is sturdy, the transmission uncomplicated (one of the few not-dreadful Ford automatics) and the body and interior are apparently flawless. If I wanted a non-hybrid, this would be on a very short list.
Ugh. The Tempo. I spent a fair amount of time in one that my aunt had.
I normally have a lot of fondness for the craptacular cars of my youth, but the Tempo is one of the few that even as a kid, I really, really didn’t like. It’s shittyness was only further exposed by just how much radically better the Taurus of that time was. So much of the Taurus seemed so similar, yet the quality of literally every single element of it was vastly superior. Made the Tempo feel like a sack of shit by comparison.
My parents bought one the very first Tempos in our town just before I was hatched. 4 door, 5spd, black and had a/c. Got the family through the birth of my sister a couple years later, snow storms, road trips to see family,the purchase of a home, school runs etc. Most maintenance (including a clutch) my dad did in the driveway. It ultimately would be sold about the time I was 10. I was too tall to sit in the back for more than short runs making it not so functional for a family of 4. It went to someone my dad worked with and continued on for several years before it just faded away.
Cars that are exciting to drive, look at or both are great…but the ones that just do the job and treat you well in the process are the unsung heros of the automotive landscape.
That’s pretty much the same experience I had as a kid, except the one my dad owned was a lightly used GLS 2dr 5 spd. It got us through just fine for 7 years but it also helped my parents save enough money to pay-off the mortgage much sooner than expected. It also outlasted my mom’s Subaru wagon from the same model year.
My grandma had a red ’92-94 era Tempo sedan…I don’t remember it being a bad little car. It was her second vehicle she’d ever owned and she was around 80 when she bought it. The first was a ’79 Pinto she’d purchased at age 65 that later became my first car.
My dad had driven the Tempo to Little Caesars one day to pick up lunch one day, when a full-size van was T-boned by a pickup and went skyward, flipping up and over the Tempo. One of the van’s tires touched down and dented the roof, leaving a nice tread print in the middle. That could have gone worse.
My grandparents had the same one, in the classic baby blue. It became my first car in 1997, so it wasn’t that old, and had been driven by a small-town retired minister. After many dumb teenager mishaps, I eventually didn’t latch the hood all the way and when it flew up on the Florida Turnpike while driving to college, that was that. It was a good car.
I’ll bet that was exciting!
I wrecked the Pinto as well, but it only looked like shit…it kept running fine. Loved that stupid little thing.
I liked the first iteration of the Mercury Topaz solely because it had these little accordion sections if the bumper. I thought those were hilarious because why shouldn’t a bumper have a an accordion look to it, even if they didn’t do anything.
https://barnfinds.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/031022-1986-Ford-Tempo-LX-3.jpg
what if it was designed for shock absorption? Can’t really say but it might have been far from successful otherwise all new cars would have them.
If there was one great example of every make, model, and mark of every car ever made, how many cars would there be?
I’d like someone from The Autopian to do this calculation for me please.
How would it compare to the total number of cars on the road today?
I still want someone to calculate the % of different models that are still on the road after X number of decades. Because I would bet the Saturn SL is in the top 10 for cockroach cars.
Dude. I’ve been seeing these lately. I’m sure they’ve always been around, and I’m just noticing them, but wtf. How are they still here? I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw a Chevy Cavalier…or Lumina or Monte Carlo, or any other GM product from that era.
Maybe it’s the plastic bodies? Fewer opportunities for rust. Also, I think the overall build quality was better on the Saturns than on the rest of the GM line at the time.
Don’t forget the early ’90s Grand Am.
I haven’t seen a Saturn for quite a while around me but still see the occasional boxy j-body and some of the later ones too.
Three of my mom’s siblings had tempos at the same time. Oddly the aunt with children had the 2 door while my 2 uncles who didn’t have children (yet) had the 4 door versions. Longest lasting was my uncle’s with the standard. My other uncle gave up on his when it had constant overheating issues and one side of the driver’s seat broke so he was always twisted driving it. My aunt eventually got a contour to replace hers so her experience couldn’t have been too awful, although that contour was the last ford any of the 6 of the siblings owned.
Yes, that side was a Ford family. I don’t think my grandfather owned anything but a Ford including tractors his entire life.
Growing up, we had a bunch of Topazes. Learned to drive in those cars, so they will always hold a special place in my heart. And they held up surprisingly well with two driving age teenage boys. Love to see them still out there.