The Tempo / Topaz were brilliant cars (no, really they were)

[Fgts]

I brought this topic up because how were those cars were made, cost and engineered making billions for Ford.

 

The brilliant part was the twins were built using an extended Escort/Lynx platform with unique style, advanced electronics and better handling then the Escort while keeping cost low. The Tempo alone sold 400,000 in it's 1st year, not to mention the Escort was a sales success during that era. Besides the 2.3 engine problems it was a nice car.

 

Imo Ford started to shoot themselves when the Tempo replacement (Contour) was 2k more base then a loaded V6 Tempo in 94' and wasn't as simple to fix as the Tempo, also it was on a standalone platform.

 

My final point is where the 2015 "Tempo"?, or in other words a slightly upgraded smaller-mid-size car with good styling, simple powertrains, low price and built off the Focus platform.

Edited August 7, 2014 by Fgts

[CurtisH]

The worst car I ever owned: 1998 Contour

2nd worst car I ever owned: 1987 Topaz

 

I literally could not wait to get rid of those two cars.

[Hugh]

The Tempo/Topaz, Contour/Mystique timeline was my first post on these forums. As a former Topaz owner and still driving the In-laws Mystique from time to time, I have some ancedotal evidence to submit.

My father had a '86 Tempo LX. At the time you could call the Tempo a compact and an Escort fell into the sub-compact category based on the competition. When the Contour came out in 95, it was not marketed as a Tempo replacement and perhaps it should have been. The cost difference was $1,500-2,500 CAD for a Taurus at least when my father was selling Fords for over 20 years. The Taurus was a Mid-size back then.

My Topaz was a 93 with the Vulcan, pretty good for what it was. I felt the 86 Tempo was the best of the competition at the time (Cavalier, K-Car/300, Jetta, Stellar, Civic). The 90's, not so much. The Contour was on-par with its competion but priced to close the the cash-cow Taurus.

At the end of the day, the current lineup IMHO meets all the requirements. Owning a Fiesta and an Escape, I have drove a Focus, Taurus and last-gen Fusion. I think all the bases are covered.

[30 OTT 6]

I had a 1992 Tempo GLS which I bought brand new but late in the sales year so I got a great deal on it. It had the 2.3L I4 and my first manual (5 spd.) transmission. It had A/C and power mirrors but manual windows, an AM/FM Radio, and no rear speakers. It did have a trunk spoiler and a rocker panel graphic for the sport appearance. When I bought it the dealer said they'd install an AM/FM casette deck and I told them to forget it. I took it to a local car radio shop and got a Pioneer AM/FM CD deck (in my previous car I used a portable CD player with one of those cassette shell adapters that plugged into the cassette player, remember those setups!, bump-skip, bump-skip, bump-skip), Pioneer Amp and Pioneer speakers all around.

 

I was told that the Tempo would give me problems but I didn't have many issues. The biggest was a engine mount that got loose (Quality is job 1) and created a nasty clunking noise one day every time I shifted. I drove that car right up until I traded it for a used '96 Mustang GT in 1998. I kept the stereo.

[hermans]

I had a 1992 tempo GLS with the V-6 motor. It was quite a sleeper. Very quick. I put 185,000 miles on it before I sold it.

[ehaase]

In retrospect, I think the Fairmont/Zephyr that the Tempo/Topaz were the superior cars, but FWD was hot at the time, and Ford needed a competitor for the X and K cars. I remember that Erika was the name of the Escort platform, Topaz was the name of the Tempo platform, but Ford also had a Monica platform planned and later cancelled that may have been the first proposal for a FWD compact car.

[ZanatWork]

I brought this topic up because how were those cars were made, cost and engineered making billions for Ford.

 

The brilliant part was the twins were built using an extended Escort/Lynx platform with unique style, advanced electronics and better handling then the Escort while keeping cost low. The Tempo alone sold 400,000 in it's 1st year, not to mention the Escort was a sales success during that era. Besides the 2.3 engine problems it was a nice car.

 

Imo Ford started to shoot themselves when the Tempo replacement (Contour) was 2k more base then a loaded V6 Tempo in 94' and wasn't as simple to fix as the Tempo, also it was on a standalone platform.

 

My final point is where the 2015 "Tempo"?, or in other words a slightly upgraded smaller-mid-size car with good styling, simple powertrains, low price and built off the Focus platform.

Having owned both a Tempo and a Contour, I can say this:

 

The Tempo was decent at a time when the domestics were nearly as dumb about small family cars as they were about compacts. I actually liked it fine, but it was obviously an "on the cheap" car when I drove essentially anything from a contemporary Japanese maker. The Accord, which hadn't grown into a true midsizer at that point, was a better car in every single way.

 

I really liked the Contour, but its transmission ate itself right after I paid the car off (yes, it had gotten fluids and filters at the correct times). It handled and drove light years better than the Tempo, and I actually got it into triple-digit speeds on one long road trip...and only had the 2.0...but it also had interior trim that seemed determined to fall apart very easily.

 

To me, the Contour was out of the oven slightly too soon. A bit more rear legroom, some more "focus" on quality, and it could have been much better remembered. Sadly, that was an era where Ford was losing interest in quality.

 

Trotman and Nasser...so much more interested in the "toy brands" than the core....

[RichardJensen]

The Tempo and Topaz were alright for what they were. They were solidly built cars, with bodywork that held up very well (which is typically a Ford strength).

 

However, I don't think they earned billions for Ford Motor. They were made during the "guaranteed employment number" years, and during a time when Ford hadn't implemented the same cost saving production strategies used by the Japanese. They were heavily fleeted (I remember another brand's local dealer spending much of the early 90s talking about batches of used 'program cars' that they'd just received--such were the 'good ol' days'), and compared to the Japanese cars, they were not at all reliable, especially when it came to the AOD transmission and the front suspension's insatiable appetite for tie-rod ends.

[2b2]

I don't have any stories of my own

but

wasn't there an AWD version?

 

...My final point is where the 2015 "Tempo"?, or in other words a slightly upgraded smaller-mid-size car with good styling, simple powertrains, low price and built off the Focus platform.

re: another size/wheelbase

104.3" = Focus & C-Max

105.9" = Escape/MKC

109.8" = Grand C-Max

imho it should be quite feasible for the nextgen Focus to increase the legroom between its wheels

be even better if they don't increase or even cutdown on the overhangs

[Anthony]

I had a Topaz. Loaded up. I actually really liked that car. Man, I'm getting old, I literally forgot I had that car until this thread.

[mackinaw]

I don't have any stories of my own

but

wasn't there an AWD version?

 

 

Yes there was. A gal I used to work with owned one. She liked the car, especially in the winter. AWD is a big plus up here in snowland (northern lower Michigan).

[theoldwizard]

Besides the 2.3 engine problems it was a nice car.

For those too young (or possibly too old) to remember, this was not the Lima 2.3L use in the Pinto, Mustang II and ultimately in the Thuderbird Turbo Coupe and Mustang SVO. No it was basically the old 2oo/250 CID pushrod I6 but down to 4 cylinders.

 

What a turd !

[theoldwizard]

Imo Ford started to shoot themselves when the Tempo replacement (Contour) was 2k more base then a loaded V6 Tempo in 94' ...

The 3.0L Vulcan V6, especially in combination with a stick shift was a pretty peppy package. The second generation styling was better.

 

And the real win was price. The T/T twins were cheap !

[theoldwizard]

The worst car I ever owned: 1998 Contour

Oh Yeah !

 

I traded in an Escort GT (with the Mazda DOHC engine) for a V6 Contour. I did save money on insurance, but the interior space was TERRIBLE ! I used to be able to pack 4 "full size" (if you know what I mean) adults in that 2 door Escort. I couldn't even put two 15 year olds in the back seat of that Contour.

[SoonerLS]

My dad bought a brand new '86 Tempo with an I-4 (I can't recall the displacement) and an MTX. For the day and the money (IIRC, it was around $7K, brand new--almost $10K less than our '84 Bronco), it really was a nice car. It served him reliably as a DD for well over 150K miles, with its only problem being an initial bouncy idle (unless you count the time, fairly early in its life, when a teenage girl blew through a stop sign and nailed it in the passenger-side rear wheel, but the car protected him and my youngest brother, and it had a long trouble-free life after that).

[grbeck]

We never owned one, but, based on what I saw at the time, when they debuted, these two were head-and-shoulders above their GM and Chrysler competition (the front-wheel-drive X-cars and Plymouth Reliant/Dodge Aries) when it came to interior design and interior and exterior fit-and-finish. The Chrysler four-cylinder engine, however, was much better than the four-cylinder engine used in the Tempo/Topaz. By the time the Tempo/Topaz debuted, the GM X-cars had such a terrible reputation that they were hardly any competition at all.

 

Their styling really was fresh at the time, and only looks bland today because the rest of the industry followed Ford's lead in moving to the "aero" look for family sedans.

 

The first ones had the bugs that plagued all of Detroit's early front-wheel-drive cars, although they weren't nearly as bad as the GM X-cars in that regard. The versions with true fuel injection are much improved.

 

Their main problem was that they hung around for too long, and when Ford replaced them, it was with a considerably more expensive car that had a very cramped back seat.

 

There are still a few in daily use around here, although most are beaters at this point. Every now and then, however, a "grandma" Tempo/Topaz from the 1980s with low mileage and in mint condition pops up at local car shows.

Edited August 8, 2014 by grbeck

[akirby]

Was that the same 2.3L that was in my 1990 Ranger?

[grbeck]

Was that the same 2.3L that was in my 1990 Ranger?

I don't think it was the same engine. I believe that the Tempo four-cylinder was essentially a six with two cylinders lopped off, while the Ranger engine descended from the four that originally debuted in the Pinto.

[30 OTT 6]

For those too young (or possibly too old) to remember, this was not the Lima 2.3L use in the Pinto, Mustang II and ultimately in the Thuderbird Turbo Coupe and Mustang SVO. No it was basically the old 2oo/250 CID pushrod I6 but down to 4 cylinders.

 

What a turd !

What do you mean? That's an engine with proven technology and a low centre of gravity.

 

I remember once I had the oil cap off the valve cover looking for the cam inside. It wasn't until a few years later that I found out I was looking in the wrong place. In those days I had to go to the library to google it.

[grbeck]

What do you mean? That's an engine with proven technology and a low centre of gravity.

 

I remember once I had the oil cap off the valve cover looking for the cam inside. It wasn't until a few years later that I found out I was looking in the wrong place. In those days I had to go to the library to google it.

Those engines were slow in the acceleration department. These cars were developed during the second fuel crunch, when everyone was predicting $3-a-gallon gasoline by 1985 (in early 1980s dollars). Gasoline prices hit an inflation-adjusted peak in early 1981 that wouldn't be surpassed until a few years ago. Blazing acceleration was not a priority, although the four-cylinder Tempo and Topaz were slow even for that time.

 

My parents had a 1982 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale with the gasoline V-8. It was a nice enough car, but it sure was slow.

Edited August 8, 2014 by grbeck

[twintornados]

The 2.3L HSC (High Swirl Combustion (HSC) was a version of the old 3.3L straight 6 with two cylinders chopped off. Cam in block design and a crossflow head...I always felt that THIS was the motor that should have been in the Ranger of the same era and not the 2.3L OHC Lima motor. I also bought the (then) wife a Mercury Mystique and she drove that car well until after we were divorced.....good, solid little car....

[bolt in blue]

Not a Ford product but I can definitely vouch for the slow cars of the 80s. My family had a 1985 or 86 Plymouth Reliant when I was growing up. My mom loved having six passenger seating but that car was pretty terrible other than seat count and comfort. Slow, ate mufflers, windows rolled themselves down, car shook violently above 55 mph, three speed transmission shifted roughly. My parents got rid of it when it was 13 years old with 86k on it (very early for us). In that time, we had to replace the head gasket, went through four or five mufflers (we drove 250 miles back from vacation once without a muffler - probably the only K car that ever sounded like a race car!), and had to have the A/C recharged every summer after it was just a few years old. We eventually gave up on the a/c and just drove our other car any time we only needed one car in the summer.

 

In contrast, our other car during much of that time was a pretty stripped 1990 Subaru Legacy wagon. I had a 2013 Subaru Outback as a rental last summer and other than being better equipped and having a CD player, didn't feel that different than the one we bought 13 years earlier that I had learned to drive on. The Subaru was definitely ahead of its time.

 

We had a Contour as a rental in 1998 or 1999 after our then almost new van was in an accident. Not sure how the insurance company thought a midsize was a good replacement for a minivan but whatever. The Contour they gave us only had 10,000 miles but had clearly been abused. The rear driver's side door didn't open. There were cigarette burns on the ceiling. The car felt like it needed new brakes. Even given those issues, the car felt cheap. You could feel the plastic door handles flexing as you opened the doors. I'm guessing that some of the quality issues were fixed pretty fast - the one we drove certainly wasn't going to age well!

[mackinaw]

Their styling really was fresh at the time, and only looks bland today because the rest of the industry followed Ford's lead in moving to the "aero" look for family sedans.

 

 

 

Agreed. I think we forget how revolutionary Ford styling was back in the early/mid 1980's. The U.S. industry was coming out of the fuel-crisis "K-car era" where everything was boxy. The aero-look found on the '83 Bird, Tempo/Topaz, Taurus was something brand new, at least for the U.S. market. Ford, at this time, was the acknowledged styling leader in the U.S.

[grbeck]

Agreed. I think we forget how revolutionary Ford styling was back in the early/mid 1980's. The U.S. industry was coming out of the fuel-crisis "K-car era" where everything was boxy. The aero-look found on the '83 Bird, Tempo/Topaz, Taurus was something brand new, at least for the U.S. market. Ford, at this time, was the acknowledged styling leader in the U.S.

Everybody was following GM, which used the squared-off 1975 Cadillac Seville as a template as it downsized its full-size and intermediate cars. The original Seville was a handsome car, but the basic look was tired by the early 1980s, primarily because GM and Chrysler, in particular, had used it so much.

 

GM was still the styling leader in the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, so people forget what a risk those Ford "aero" cars were at the time.

[Fgts]

I don't have any stories of my own

but

wasn't there an AWD version?

 

re: another size/wheelbase

104.3" = Focus & C-Max

105.9" = Escape/MKC

109.8" = Grand C-Max

imho it should be quite feasible for the nextgen Focus to increase the legroom between its wheels

be even better if they don't increase or even cutdown on the overhangs

As for the reliability stories, i didn't say they were great there but great from a manufacturing perspective.

 

As for the CUV, that's not the point. I was getting at can Ford offer a similar car off the Focus platform. For example the Nissan Versa is a discontented, re-styled Sentra and sells in good numbers. In the Tempo's case it was re-styled, advanced content Escort. And the question remains can Ford offer a car like that today?.