The Tempo (along with it's Mercury sibling, the Topaz) Was Ford's compact car in the 1980s and early 1990s. It came in 2 and 4 door body styles. What made this car stand out was it's "round shape" (most other cars looked like rolling boxes). Ford called it a "jelly bean design. It was quite an innovative looking car when it came out in 1984. However, when the even more innovative Taurus came out two years later, the Tempo became more of an afterthought to Ford. Aside from a re-design in 1987, the Tempo remained more or less the same until it was replaced by the Ford Contour in 1995.
Despite being in the Taurus' shadows, the Tempo was still a relatively strong seller. During it's ten-year run, Ford moved over 2 million cars.
There were two things that made this otherwise blah car stand out
1. All wheel drive-Between 1987 and 1991, Ford equipped certain Tempos with an AWD drivetrain, which can be activated and de-activated with the push of a button.
2. V6 engine-throughout most of the Tempo's life, customers were limited to getting an underpowered 4 cylinder engine in their car. During it's last year of production, Ford figured "why the hell not" and shoe-horned their Vulcan v6 engine under the hood. This gave the car more power to an otherwise underpowered concept.
The reason why I like this car is because they came with automatic seatbelts (a stupid idea, but a hilarious novelty) Also, the car is fairly uncommon these days (especially in the rust belt, where I live). While the Taurus is usually regarded as the car the led the way for making cars rounder, it was the Tempo that introduced America to the design, and I'm all for rooting for the underdog.
(image courtesy of Wikipedia)
I once owned a Topaz!
ReplyDelete