The Ford Tempo was never a glamorous car. It was slow, small, and almost entirely style-free. But at the same time, the Tempo’s sheer mundanity came in shades. If you really wanted to unimpress, you had to go for broke by buying the incredibly obscure and short-lived diesel version.
Joy of joys, you can do exactly that today! A seller in Cleveland, Ohio has listed a 1985 Ford Tempo in gleaming condition, and…it’s got the diesel donk! It’s about as mid as you can get without hitting rock bottom, and it could be yours.
Yes, Ford’s entry into the world of front-wheel-drive compacts was unexceptional and forgettable. The Tempo name died forever just 11 years after it entered production. It was neither interesting nor bad enough to make a serious impression on anybody, but we’re not anybody. We’re The Autopian, so we’re gonna remember the diesel Tempo and pore over this finely preserved example.
From 1984 to 1986, Ford offered the Tempo with Mazda’s RF diesel engine under the hood. The four-cylinder engine offered just 53 horsepower, which is even funnier when you realize that’s just 39 kW. That is what the kids call a low number. Torque wasn’t great either, with just 82 pound-feet on tap—about enough to twist apart an Oreo. The diesel models were only available with a five-speed manual. This was a sage decision on Ford’s part, because they’d be even slower if they lost more power through a torque-converter automatic.
The diesel came with one main benefit, though—fuel economy. Where the 2.3-liter gas engine was achieving 23 mpg combined, the diesel would trounce that with a figure of 34 mpg combined. If you only had one gallon of diesel, you could go a whole 11 miles further than your friend with one gallon of gas! If you were both racing to dig up treasure 30 miles away, you’d have the edge by far. Still, your friend would have far less trouble merging onto the highway, with the 2.3-liter HSC gas engine having a much healthier 90 horsepower on tap.
The owner of this fine 1985 Ford Tempo GLX claims even better economy than that. The ad reports achieving up to 43 to 51 miles per gallon. That’s within the believable range, assuming some careful hypermiling techniques were applied. The Tempo was light by modern standards, at 2,606 pounds, which didn’t hurt either.
It’s in amazing condition for a 39-year-old vehicle. The Tempo is resplendent in Regatta Blue, and it wears its badges with pride. The owner notes it’s sat for 6-8 months, but it has near new tires. “Needs to be driven!” reads the ad, and that’s true. It does. Honestly, the car looks like it rolled out of the dealership last week, ready to go. Even the underbody is clean.
What about mileage? Well, it’s got 72,000 miles on the clock. That works out to less than 2,000 miles a year.
This Tempo was delivered fully-loaded, to boot. The owner has plenty of documents on the car, including a “Deluxe Marti report” that outlines the car’s options from the factory. This one came new with power steering, the sports instrument cluster, air conditioning, and power windows. It even scored power locks, a sunroof, and “Speed Control,” which is what Ford called cruise control in the 1980s. Hilariously, the document also notes that the car was built ten days behind schedule. The diesel was apparently so slow, it even dawdled through the production line.
It’s not hard to buy a desirable classic car if you’ve got lots of money. There are plenty of old Jaguars, Ferraris, and Porsches in fine shape, which are maintained to that degree because of the glory they inspire. It’s much rarer to happen across a regular car that has been kept to this standard. And that’s what makes this Tempo so special.
As an aside, I’ll tell you a deep secret. It’s this writer’s dream to build a Tempo track car one day. I have a yearning to drive the car that was so middle-of-the-road, it was forgotten as soon as someone stopped looking at it. A diesel Tempo would be all the better, though I couldn’t possibly desecrate a pristine living example like this one.
If you bought this car for $5,500, you’d probably be driving one of only a handful of Tempos still remaining. The fact that it’s of the diesel, manual variety only makes it rarer. If you treat Cars and Coffee like a competitive blood sport, buy this Ford Tempo, and cherish it like the gem that it never was. Precious few remain, and they ought to be cherished.
Image credits: Facebook Marketplace, Ford
I love/hate that the owner got a Marti report to prove… what, exactly? That it’s numbers-matching and someone didn’t transplant the desirable Diesel engine in? That it was born with 80’s slate blue paint over slate blue? That it’s, OMG, one of only 1,829 with a MF’in cassette deck?! Quit watching Barrett-Jackson auctions, dude. Being old with a blue oval on the grille doesn’t automatically make it a ’67 Mustang.
Come on now, maybe he just really likes the car, and knows that it’s odd. How odd? Lets get a report and see! I don’t have a clue what a Marti report costs. Or maybe he’s just got twisted sense of humor?
Its even rarer than that. Its only one of 87 with that engine/trans code. With that few made, its got to be the LAST one left lol
1 of 87 with that engine/transmission combo. He knows what he has!
Some people just want to watch the world burn. These cars rolled off the line terrible, nothing about them is worth the suffering they impose on their drivers.
My Mom had an ’85 gas version. White with a blue interior. Was a great car for the time. This was up against the K-cars, so the styling was much better.
That was until I drove it at 16, pulled a full Torchinsky when dropping off of a bridge deck into a gravel road, and did a double twisting back flip with it.
Blowing out literally every piece of glass except the little windows between the c/d pillars and bending the unibody so much that the only way out was by crawling out the back door that had been “disengaged” from the body.
Buddy of mine and I walked out completely unharmed. Only injury was that he bruised his ass because he had his keys in his back pocket. Wear your seatbelts kids!
Oh the tempo. At one point there were 3 among my mom and her 5 siblings. Yes, fully half the family owned one. The two who had automatics had a lot more issues than the one manual. One of my aunts didn’t have hers for overly long from what I remember. Maybe she traded it in on an Escort then a Contour, or maybe right to the Contour. One uncle had a seat break on one side so drove with a lean for a few years before a growing family and constant unsolved overheating issues meant it was time for a Caravan. The uncle with the manual kept his the longest although I have no knowledge of what replaced it. Yes, that side of the family is a Ford Family, although my Mustang is now the only Ford on that side now. My mom somehow avoided Fords her whole life and has only owned Japanese cars.
Few friends had them in high school. One had some sort of electrical issue so it was started by jumping the contacts with a screwdriver for the better part of a year.
One of my neighbors owned a Mercury Topaz (badge engineered Tempo)
i have never seen a car disintegrate so quickly – from showroom fresh to sad beater in about three years, The amount of salt Delaware used on their roads back in the day didn’t help much, but one would hope Ford’s paint would hold up better.
Hateful cars. I have an angry, visceral reaction to this car.
Owning this is like owning the most perfect example of something representing a historic crime against humanity. No one should ever drive this car. It should be in a museum to remind us of man’s inhumanity towards man.
Same, my mom had an 85. That piece of shit’s a/c drain would always get clogged and leak water inside the cabin. That thing was slow and unreliable, I remember when the muffler came off at an automatic car wash. What a miserable piece of shit.
My mom had one too, don’t remember the year. Not only slow and unreliable, but when it was working right it was just soul suckingly awful to drive. Everything was jerky and clunky, ride and handling soft without being smooth, switchgear felt cheap. Everything not only looked cheap, but felt and sounded cheap.
When we switched to a Dodge Shadow with the 2.5L 4 cylinder, it felt decades ahead of the Tempo. I really did like that car.
My mom got Saturn Ion, the Saturn was no an upgrade from much anything else, but it was an upgrade from that Tempo.
I dunno man, with the condition this nice on it I’d consider rocking it to, paraphrasing Mr Burns, “wallow in my own crapulence”. You just need to embrace it for what it is, I’d rock this over most modern cars I could even potentially afford.
The Tempo truly tests the limits of my rose-tinted glasses.
I’m sure the diesel is no peach either but the 2.3L gasser in these is about the least pleasant sounding engine I can think of. Like a Cuisinart dealing with a full load of walnuts.
That would be the pushrod 2.3l gasser, which made replacing blown head gaskets a relatively simple job that I did more often that I should have had to back in the day.
Time and a too-long production run has obscured just how advanced the Tempo’s styling was when new, compared to the upright Chrysler K-car with one foot still firmly in the Brougham Era and the awkwardly-proportioned Chevy Citation (a forward-thrusting prow of a hood, with FWD front overhang and dash-to-axle? What were they thinking?) the Tempo was the future.
That being said, I owned an ’84 Topaz in the early ’90s and it went from pampered, low mileage, one-elderly-owner creampuff to absolute clunker in record time. The brakes failed, the driver’s seat broke, it both leaked and burned oil at a level where neither was totally obnoxious but I was buying 88-cent-a-quart Kmart “Motorvator” oil and pouring it in on a regular basis and it was drivable but not worth fixing after hitting a deer.
88 cents a quart off brand oil, man that is a trip through the way back machine
I have driven countless old Beetles and VW busses and non-turbo’d diesel cars and have never not gotten there on time, due to the slowness of the car 😉
Yes, acceleration and speed IS fun. So I also own a Porsche..
But I would super love to just dangle along in my own tempo (ha!) in one of these cool rides.
I remember these well, they were actually pretty good cars but were kneecapped by lousy engines. The post-refresh version could be had with the Taurus’ V6, which was much better.
Ford replaced the Tempo/Topaz with the very cool but too-small-fer-Murcans Contour/Mystaque.
At one point in time in the late 90’s, my mom still had her 87 Acura Integra and my brother had an 87 Tempo. My lord that Tempo despite being the same year felt a decade older and was such a pile of shit compared to the Integra. (Yes I know the Integra was slightly upmarket for the time, but still)
I’m sure in Ford’s mind they were competitors. LOL
My brother had an ’87 Integra with a 5-speed, the requisite 5 spoke allows, a 2″ drop, and a Mugen exhaust. That was a seriously nice car for the time. Totally different level than a Tempo.
My parents bought a 1990 tempo 4 door when I was a kid. It was the first car they had that made me ask questions about the inner workings of a car because of the major issue it had, twice. I learned what a wrist pin is because of that car because Ford apparently couldn’t figure out how to assemble them properly so the tempo munched its way through two engines in as many years because the wrist pins walked out of their homes and straight into the cylinder walls. They replaced it with a plymouth voyager after the second motor.
All hail Ford Tempo Fanatic.
Two-door diesels are generally rare – the Venn diagram of people who need diesel economy and don’t care about performance but want the stylish version and hate giving people rides is quite small.
As soon as I saw this, I thought of them/hoped they’d made their way over from the old site!
That stuff like this was available in coupe form is one of the big reasons I love this era – there was something refreshingly honest about everyday cars that could be had as coupes just b/c hey, I aspire to be a little stylish, within reason.
I contrast that with today’s I need a car that can put down fast hot laps at the ‘ring ethos.
Coupes were quite popular with people who didn’t have to carpool or carry a larger family around all the time.
That, and they had two fewer doors to rattle, which was a longstanding point in coupes’ favor among many buyers, given the way cars had been put together (at least in the US) for decades.
The best thing that can probably be said is that the Tempo’s interior design is decent.
The dash has a reasonable modern-ness for 1984; there’s actually a tach, which were super rare on cars like this back them, and even the Bishop’s “vehicle information center” light-up diagram that was silly but compellingly ’80s-furturo. And control stalks, buttons on the wheel, even a cassette deck!
Mom’s first “company” car was a Topaz LS … and compared with what she had been driving (a base-model ’80 Regal) it felt like the future. No, it wasn’t smooth or especially quiet, but it was a big upgrade.
My best friend in high school had a Tempo coupe. His was gunmetal gray, had a booming stereo, and tinted windows. This was the late 80’s, so it was pretty cool.
And compared to my ride (1960 El Camino], it seemed like a space ship!
Oh man…there’s so much here about Tempo that I forgot (bear in mind that my mom wheeled a first year Tempo home one day in fall of ’83 and it looked like a spaceship compared to the Caprice Estate she was driving previously). Where do I start…Diesel. Completely forgot that this was an option. Next, the fish scale dash board…obviously part of the sport gauge package, or maybe it was standard on that upscale GLX package that also brought the chrome trim to the grille. Next up is graphic light warning cluster that was clearly borrowed from the fox mustang. Last, the delicious am/fm analog radio with cassette. Truest test of an oldhead vs everyone else would be the “do a radio preset” challenge (no peeking at youtube!)
“The Tempo name died forever just 11 years after it entered production.”
Never underestimate how willing Ford is to recycle an old nameplate. We may yet see the Tempo badge again…
As the Spiritual successor to the original Maverick, I fully expect a full electric, Overlanding convertible UTE Tempo for 2035.
My mom had an ’87 two door Tempo that she bought new and drove into the ground. It was retired to a nice farm to live out the rest of its days with all the dogs and cats of so many suburban children. Actually it was 10 years old when it was traded in and I have always hoped that car was crushed into oblivion shorty after. An auto with the 2.3l that car was a penalty box on wheels, and the interior reeked of my moms Winstons. I’ve hated every Tempo since with the fire of 1,000 suns and see them as a plague on the earth that is now nearly extinct.
But GODDAMN I want this car. It is so awful that it is now truly great. A unicorn of a Tempo, because as I’m sure that there are still thousands of Tempos still plodding along making their owners question their life choices I would think that this is one of only 5-10 diesel Tempo coupes left in existence.
This is a Radwood show winner for sure.
As a fellow November 1984 arrival in this world, I’d like to think I started out with a higher ceiling than this Tempo, but the car has been better preserved these last 39.5 years.
No, I’m not anxious about turning 40, who said anything about turning 40?
It’s pretty crazy to think that someone has opted to take care of this Ford Tempo far, far better than I take care of myself.
September 84 and I feel you.
Two things. These were incredibly slow with the gas engine. I can only imagine with the diesel. At the same time, I love well preserved regular cars.
Secondly, How about the Oldsmobile Diesel parked next to it? I’d rather have that. If it hasn’t grenaded itself they can be made reliable. Cruising in that sweet velour sofa would be great.
1979 Delta 88, it sure looks like a sweet ride.
So it lacks…tempo?
Bam!!
COTD right out of the damn gates!
Not quite my Tempo.
I had the “privilege” of driving one of these for a few days back in the late 80’s. It was both depressing and hilarious at the same time.
Depressing to look at or be in. Hilarious to drive with your foot planted on the floor and the vibrations of the powertrain massaging your nether regions.
It sounds like the car knew that it sucked to drive and tried resorting to sexual favors to keep you from sending it to the scrapyard.
Later developments in this field gave us the Probe.