My ongoing quest to see more of my city led me through Chicago’s tony Gold Coast neighborhood to get to North Avenue Beach, a stretch of waterfront I had seen many times from DuSable Lake Shore Drive but had never been to before. It was an overcast Saturday and while I’m okay in large crowds of people where I can just get lost and blend in, I was looking forward to taking advantage of fewer folks being there on a cloudy day. I figured I could be more introspective and also get all the pictures I wanted without feeling like an intruder.
It was shockingly easy to get there from my home, which made me wonder why it had taken me so long to explore a beach outside of my immediate area. I took a Red Line train south from Edgewater to the North & Clybourn station, and then the eastbound 72 North Avenue bus, which put me only ten to fifteen minutes walking distance from Lake Michigan. I had thought the bus would take me straight there, but it didn’t – which was okay, since it yielded my opportunity to spot today’s featured car, an ’89 Ford Tempo.
This wasn’t the first Tempo I’ve seen and written about over the past couple of years (that honor belongs to this ’92 GLS), but it’s maybe the fifth I’ve seen out in the wild probably over the past decade or so, at least to my recollection. A first-year example was the first car to which I had exclusively held the keys as my ride. I’ve mentioned that red, ’84 Tempo GL many times over the years, but the Cliff’s Notes version of that story is that it had been the family car purchased new in the fall of ’84, then given to me just seven years later during my senior year of high school.
I sold it almost immediately after taking possession and used the cash to buy a ’76 Chevy Malibu Classic two-door. I loved that Malibu, but it turned out to be a rolling Bondo party (masked very well), and thirsty. It was smooth as silk to drive and operate, had good power from its two-barrel 350 V8, and was super comfortable, but my days of long, aimless joyrides were effectively over once it sat in the driveway in the space the Tempo had once occupied.
From the 1984 Ford Tempo sales brochure.
I wanted rid of the Tempo not only because of associations with my family and the car seeming stale by then, but it simply wouldn’t keep running while at a stop. That was a problem. After multiple trips to Autotech Garage in downtown Flint which resulted in only incremental increases in driveability, my teenage self decided that car had to go. Maybe it was one step in needed self-differentiation from my family of origin, but whatever. That Tempo had also become something of a punchline with my friends and me.
It had only an AM radio with a dashboard-mounted speaker, no air conditioning, and the unfortunate habit of chirping the front tires at a stop light when I’d shift from revving in neutral (which I did to keep it from stalling) to “drive”. Chevettes and Horizons resultantly showed no mercy, as their drivers would accept my unintentional “challenge” and leave my poor Tempo in the dust while my friends would chuckle, or in the case of my best bud, Fred, burst out into a loud, hyena-like howl when this would happen. (He still laughs like that.)
I’m pretty comfortable anywhere I go these days, though it’s true that this wasn’t always the case. That’s not to say that I don’t love or embrace having grown up in a Rust Belt factory town, but there have been times when I have found myself amid surroundings that have felt way too fancy where I’d ask myself, Joe, what are you doing here? Humor has often been my fallback, but even more than this, I also came to internalize that I am not “less than” and no less deserving to be anywhere that anyone else can go.
With that said, I immediately identified with this ’89 Tempo on some level when I stumbled across it. This small, affluent enclave on the easternmost section of North Avenue was built up with historic brownstones, large mansions, and towering high-rises, with some private passenger vehicles on the streets there worth more than the principal amount of my former house note. And here was this gold Tempo, sitting there as if to say, “Yeah? What?”
You’re in a fancy neighborhood when it has statues. Influential dentist Greene Vardiman Black.
I’ve already cited the reasons for my bias against these cars as specific to the example I had owned, but the one thing I feel the original ’84 Tempo four-door had absolutely nailed was its styling. Its look was peerless, with its Probe III showcar-inspired styling, aircraft-style doors, and uniquely slatted, body-colored grille treatment. It looked like a North American, front-drive version of the trendsetting European Ford Sierra to me.
To this day, I don’t understand why the look of the original Tempo hasn’t gotten its due the way the style of the early Taurus continues to. I’m sure the 2.3 liter “high swirl combustion” four-cylinder (better known as a computerized, two-thirds of a Falcon six) and its lack of power and thrashy operation has something to do with that (beauty is as beauty does), but does that mean that credit shouldn’t be given where it is actually due? The Tempo’s ’88 restyle, in my opinion, took away the one, really good thing the Tempo ever had.
Where do I start? Please allow me to be less than my normal, diplomatic self as I wax the opposite-of-poetic about the styling. In place of a look that was an artful interpretation of the early aero look was an exterior that was supposed to ape Taurus but was thoroughly uninspired. The conventional chrome grille up front. Those blocky, unimaginative, full-width, tricolor taillamps. The worst of it for me was that C-pillar seam that appeared out of nowhere. Instead of even trying to hide the cheapness, Ford put a piece of trim there as if to emphasize it. “We meant to do that.” Yeah, okay.
Even the headlights were irksome to me. They seemed to be staring up at the sky at a fifteen-degree angle, like an early-’80s Celica, but without something as cool as the actual Celica attached. I know the Tempo was supposed to be basic transportation, but did it also have to stop caring about how it looked? Let’s not even talk about how only the four-door got a full restyle for ’88, leaving the never-popular coupe to continue its same, basic exterior styling for its entire run with updates that seemed insignificant.
1989 Ford Tempo GLS print ad.
The Tempo was a popular car. The restyled ’88 models found almost 476,700 buyers (of which only 10% were coupes), which represented a whopping 69% increase over ’87, the final year for the first-generation. Eighty-nine, the year of our featured car, saw sales slip to about 288,800, but this was still a great number, and not all that far behind that of the best-selling car that year, the Honda Accord, which posted 362,700 units. The ’89 Accord also was the first foreign branded model that topped the annual U.S. sales chart. This gold Tempo was new when that happened. Even without knowing anything about the dynamic qualities of either car, look at pictures of both the Ford and the Honda, side-by-side. Next.
By the numbers, Ford had multiple gold-spinners in ’89, with 363,100 Escorts, 133,700 Probes, 209,800 Mustangs, 395,300 Tauruses, 114,900 Thunderbirds, and 134,100 Crown Victorias, among them. Chevrolet beat Ford’s total production that year by just over 40,500 units, or 3% (1,275,500 vs. 1,235,000). I had originally wanted to present a metaphor for this Tempo related to how it just coasted along, but there were actually at least a couple of innovations along its lifespan, including an all-wheel-drive variant (1987 – ’91) and a 3.0L V6 option (1992 – ’94).
Instead, I’ll bring it back to my original, faded red ’84 GL that could coast downhill almost as fast as it would move under its own power, or so it seemed. (Cue Fred’s hyena-laugh.) In any case and in this neighborhood chock-full of high net worth individuals and statues of historic figures sprinkled about, this gold Tempo seemed to serve as a reminder that it’s one hundred percent okay at all times to bring one’s authentic self wherever one goes.
Gold Coast, Chicago, Illinois.
Saturday, June 8, 2024.
It’s kind of astonishing, in retrospect, to see the Tempo’s sales numbers. It was a genuine hit. I was perhaps unwisely in the market for a modestly-priced new car in 1988, but the Tempo was never on the radar screen because of the engine. There might have been other reasons, digging deeper, but the engine was a dealbreaker. You could do so much better!
A secretary where I worked a few years later seemed to have trouble keeping her Tempo from stalling as well, so maybe it was standard equipment with the car.
The stalling was a big thing, for my ’84, anyway. I don’t remember any major problems with that for the first maybe five years of my family’s ownership, but by the time I got it, that Tempo was a stallin’ machine.
It feels somehow validating that the stalling wasn’t limited to just my example, but appears to have been a semi-common issue.
Thank you Joe. I think the metaphor, or at least where you wound up, is apt. Just be yourself and you’ll ultimately be just fine wherever you go. And really, many more people have put in miles in a Tempo (albeit, usually one owned by Avis or Hertz) than any of those high-roller, cost more than your mortgage principal, vehicles. So there.
Also thanks for pointing me toward Greene Vardiman (although I like “Valdimar” more) Black. I now know that he’s the “father of operative dentistry”. Among his accomplishments was the invention of the dental drill. Ouch. That definitely deserves a statue, in my opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greene_Vardiman_Black
Jeff, I thank you for the save with the name of that famous dentist! One thing that spellcheck just didn’t catch – my momentary lapse of the correct name. True story: I’m headed to the dentist this week. Let’s hope that none of GVB’s inventions need to be implemented.
Lord, these were produced too damn long. By 1988, these were fleet queens in our rental lots. I drove or rode in perhaps a hundred or so of them. Varying kinds too. We were actually excited to get the V6 versions and the AWD versions. Anything to break up the dull monotony of this over-produced blob of a cheap car.
They reeked of cheap. These were not Taurii. These were compact, cheap imitations, like they were assembled by child labor in some part of China and sold on Temu as real cars. They LOOKED nice, but after driving them for more than a day, all you remember his their mediocrity. They were dependable, and they were as interesting as a paper clip.
How bad were they? Well – a lot of our rental locations in the US used them as punishment to staffers who failed to meet their sales quotas. I think it was O’Hare that awarded the lowest performing sales executive their “Powder Blue Tempo Award”. That meant instead of getting good car for your daily work needs, you had to drive around in a Powder Blue Tempo for the next month. Monthy winners had a constant reminder to meet their sales goals or be forced into a Tempo. Winners got Lincolns. Losers got Tempos.
I was a big cheese there. I got special rides wherever I went. However, I felt it was important now and then to try the entire fleet, to keep up with standards. So, now and then, I’d get one of the new Tempos. That’s how I ended up with some of the more unusual configurations that came through the rental lots here in the US. Lots of manager would see me in a Tempo and would try and score extra points with me by offering me something, anything, better.
These cars ran and stayed together for our needs. My brother ended up with one and it was his family’s ride for five years or more without any problems – one time his timing belt jumped – but that was after over 150,000 miles. Nothing else went wrong until he traded it in for another new Ford. I don’t believe the Tempo experience lost sales for Ford, but let’s just say that Ford wasn’t making any money with them either. These sold for dollars at a time when Ford needed thousands to develop new products.
Rubbery. The steering and handling was rubbery and tippy. I never drove a Tempo that didn’t have a loose shaky console shifter. The switches felt cheap – not as cheap as found on the GM cars, but definately cheaper than your average Ford product. The shoulder belts! Those SUCKED. Before finally getting air bags, those mouse-track over the shoulder automated belts jerked across the top of your doors and sounded like a plastic credit card imprinter from 1975.
Acceleration? Not really. The V6 was good, but the standard Tempo mill was “adequate”.
Well anyway, in closing, I have zero attraction to any of these Tempos or the Mercury Topaz. I could see them as a kid’s car – but, I like my kids. The last thing I would want to see them in would be a Powder Blue Tempo. Unless they flunked a class, that is.
“My brother ended up with one and it was his family’s ride for five years or more without any problems – one time his timing belt jumped – but that was after over 150,000 miles.’
Tempos never had timing belts. Push rod engines.
After all these years, I discover that something I thought happened, didn’t happen. Timing chain perhaps? I was in the car when it happened.
The “toothpaste Tempo”, as we called it in certain colors, also became a punchline for many of us on my college dorm floor when we’d be watching The Price Is Right between classes at lunchtime. It was almost like the NEW CAR! you were okay with not winning.
The Tempo/Topaz was actually available with a driver’s side airbag surprisingly early: on a limited basis in 1986 and then as a regular option from 1987. It was added as an option to court fleet customers, in particular federal agencies, but because it wasn’t standard, it did not spare you from the awful mouse belts.
Considered a “Topaz”, two door, in “94-5”. Was , imo, a bit of a rattly ride. Anyway, it sold while I was “ruminating”.
Was a handsome “bronze” color, sort a brown inside. ((best of memory))
My aesthetic issues with the two-door models was that side character line that kicked up at the trailing edge of the rear quarter panel, which seemed like such an arbitrary styling choice. There wasn’t even a nod to some sort of rear spoiler back there.
My wife and I bought a brand new 89 Tempo for a few reasons. It was reasonably priced, it had enough room for our growing family, it laughed at central NY snow, it wasn’t a foreign car.
My wife worked as a visiting nurse and she put miles on that car like cab driver. It never broke down, never needed anything other than oil changes, brakes, and tires. And one wheel bearing. No valve adjustments, timing belts, or any other labor-intensive ‘regular maintenance’ items.
We thought nothing of blasting off on Friday night for a 800 mile round trip weekend. Put a hitch on it and towed a little utility trailer with our camping gear.
We eventually traded it in on a Honda Civic (which was a mistake).
It’s great to read of a positive ownership experience – thank you for this. Buying American, good gas mileage, and FWD traction were all still very much priorities for my parents when they picked out a Ford Tempo. In the fall of ’84, a Tempo seemed like a solid choice, especially compared with a K-car or Citation.
I could see how a redesigned ’88 or ’89 could have been seen as a positive evolution at the time, and Ford was kind of killing it with some of their other offerings (Mustang, Taurus, Thunderbird).
I never warmed up to these. Having had T-Birds at the time, the original Ford Aero Car, I felt that the AeroBird did aero right. The Tempo just left me flat.
To me the Tempo looked like a Escort with air pumped into it.
For the same reason, I never saw the wide (wild?) appeal of the original Taurus for the same reason. It looked like a Tempo with air pumped into it.
I’d learn to like the Taurus later in its higher trim versions, like the one that Edward Snitkoff would purchase. What ever happened to him? – Loved that guy’s writings.
Anyway, it was probably just me. I liked my PLC(s) and 2 door cars in general, so sedans never really did anything for me until more recently… yeah, just in time for them to go away!!! – But I digress…
“An inflated Escort” – hahaha! I guess many aero-look cars of that era might have looked inflatable with their compound curves, etc.
I still think the first Taurus was the best-looking. The first refresh didn’t quite do it for me in the same way the Tempo’s didn’t.
The 1984 Tempo was essentially an enlarged Escort, so that wasn’t an inapt characterization.
I’ll agree with your assessment of the ’88. The ’84-’87 looked ambitious, and pushed the envelope of aerodynamic styling. The ’88 did not: It looked generic and half-baked; a deliberately mediocre car intended for rental companies and cheapskates who weren’t “good” enough to afford a Taurus.
Aside from the V6 and AWD options, the one interesting thing about the latter-day Tempos was that a driver’s side airbag was available. Yet, the airbag option was extremely rare…since this was a car that sold on price, not on virtues.
Thanks, Andrew! I think the use of all of that black plastic trim on the ’88+ Tempos added to the visual cheapness. It sounds like we see / saw the same things in the redesign.
The AWD curiosity, for me, is the ’87, which still had the original bodywork. IIRC, that AWD option was really expensive, which I guess I would expect it to be.
AWD wasn’t necessarily really expensive per se, but it was packaged in ways that tended to make it expensive.
The 1987 is revealing in this respect: Ford packaged the AWD Tempo as a separate trim level, which cost $723 more than the LX and had a starting price over $10K — not an appealing place for a Tempo to be, at that time — but it was packaged with a couple hundred dollars of additional equipment and trim. Mercury, however, made AWD a standalone Topaz option, listing for $915, which sounds like a lot except that that included automatic (which was mandatory with AWD) and the “high-output” engine; the automatic listed for $482 by itself. So, if you were going to order automatic anyway, the premium for AWD was really only like $400, which wasn’t that unreasonable.
The point is that this was one of those cases where “How much did it cost” and “How much did it cost to get it” were not really the same thing.
Wow – thank you for this! It really puts Ford’s whole AWD experiment (I’ll call it that) with these cars into perspective.
Quite a find here, something once so common and mundane, now rarely, if ever, seen. I wonder if this well-preserved example had an ownership history similar to the well-kept older cars I’ve seen in Manhattan, which dwell in underground garages and are seldom driven except on the rare occasion when an elderly owner needs to leave the city. The Gold Coast has a similar affluent demographic profile and is perhaps the one part of Chicago that comes close to matching the density of the Upper East or West Sides.
My experience with the Tempo/Topaz twins was solely as a rental vehicle and I found them to be mostly indifferent lumps. I found little memorable about them. Really, it didn’t matter whether you got a Tempo, Topaz, Corsica, Beretta, Spirit or Acclaim. All were dated, uncompetitive offerings built to the lowest common denominator and thus ended up being wholesaled to rental and government fleets.
William, I like your theory about this particular example. I was wondering about its owner. Maybe this car has been inherited (or purchased) from such an individual you described.
I can see unmemorable as being an okay quality, especially for a transportation appliance. Better to go unnoticed than to be remembered for all the wrong reasons. Maybe the Tempo is like the Maverick of the ’80s.
Other than seeing millions of them on the roads (though not so much now) my only experience with Tempos and the Taurus was as rentals. Both looked nice. The Tempo was much worse to drive, especially the earlier ones. I do recall an enjoyable vacation rental Tempo in Colorado in 1992. It was our first big vacation with our son, who was about a year old, and beautiful scenery and hiking in the Rockies. The car was OK but I think it was the destinations and not the journey that make me remember it. By contrast, I had a few Tempo business rentals, ironically at least some also in Colorado, which were just mediocre. The Taurus, much better.
Dman, the rental reference seems pretty common for commenters. Thinking back, I’m now also remembering when my sister has arrived in a rental ’85 Tempo. I was surprised to see the minor changes from our ’84. The dash now had a bend in it (to help with glare?) and the wheels were nicer.
I am right there with you on the styling of these. The first gen was an attractive body on a mediocre car. This Gen lost the good looks.
My stepmom got one of these, but only had it for a short time. I need to ask her about this, I wonder if she even remembers it.
JP, your second sentence basically sums up my entire, 1,400-word essay! LOL! I’ll bet your stepmom doesn’t remember anything about hers.
For those in the Bay Area who might be tempted, like dman, down in the Santa Cruz area you can find the 1989 Tempo below for sale. Only $1990 and in Santa Cruz.
Perfect car for commuting around town.5 seater, 4-door sedan. Clean, gently worn interior.
New tires and alignment, new catalytic converter. It has a working cassette player and automatic shoulder seat belts. Excellent visibility when driving the car.
How could anyone turn that down?
Amazing! It looks to be in great shape – and how hard could it be to source a replacement center cap for that front wheel? (Actually, I could see some difficulty with that, given the low survival rate of these Tempos…)
my GF has an 84 topaz when we met. standard trans. the stalling. yeah that was a thing. hers was eventually addressed with a vented distributor cap. but that 84 models cooling system? ugh. there was some sort of 1 year only steel pipe routing coolant with strange connections on back side of that transverse engine … barely showed up on the dealers exploded diagram fiche. and her car’s version started to leak. was a pricey OEM only replacement part fix. quite the $$$bite for young couple starting out. the interior? those front seats were designed for inducing spinal curvature to the otherwise healthy masses if you were anything over average height. me, at 6’1″ ? they were torture seating.
Lars, thank you for this. I’m trying to remember if I had any issues with the front buckets, as I did take a handful of semi-long trips in my ’84 before I sold it. Then again, I was a teenager, and teenagers don’t really care about things like long-distance comfort.
The stalling. Ugh.
Great piece. These were everywhere in south Florida, probably due to the massive rental car business.
My wife’s great aunt was driving an 84 Continental and decided it was more than she needed. So she went to trade it in for a Topaz. She insisted that it was an “even swap” the Lincoln for the 2 year newer Topaz!!
The salesman worked with her for hours, even showing her a fully loaded LTS model, but she saw no money changing hands. My FIL was a regular customer there, and the dealer called him for help!!
He finally explained it to her and told her to go for the LTS model so it was not too much of a step down!
The salesman quit!!
Thank you – for your kind words, and also the story about your wife’s great aunt’s auto swap. I wasn’t expecting the punchline at the end!
Thanks, everyone. I had originally wanted to incorporate one of these first-year commercials into this essay, but for whatever reason couldn’t find a clear example on YouTube. While searching for something else today, I uncovered this one.
Check the end. What in the name of Rankin-Bass stop-motion business is that loop-the-loop?? No Tempo, ever, did that for real.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F7h47Dwm5I4
My Mother (who’s since stopped driving) had a new ’88 2 door which served her during her last years of work…she retired 31 years ago, but my sister moved in and they shared the Tempo…it was 17 years old by then so I tried fixing some of the nagging problems it had (like power locks and remote fuel door release not working). I borrowed it a couple of times before my sister moved in when I was working on my car for big multiple day projects, it was OK.
What did it in was the A/C compressor went, didn’t want to spend the money to replace it so it became a sacrifice for a state kind of “cash for clunkers”….it wasn’t otherwise a clunker but A/C is a requirement in Central Texas…it was traded for an ’09 Focus sedan which my sister still drives.