As with those glamorous cab advertisements that I showed you last week, there’s a lot of times that you need to add excitement to products that just aren’t very thrilling. Today you can take any Bohring Dullbox ES sedan and, with the magic of Hollywood-style CG, make it appear in all sorts of death-defying scenarios and hope to bring attention to something so ubiquitous that you might lose it in a mall parking lot. In the early eighties, it wasn’t that easy.
You can see ad executives sitting around a table with Styrofoam coffee cups and Marlboros trying to come up with a campaign for some everyday car. “What do you think of when someone says ‘excitement’?” asks the creative director. Naturally, somebody mentions the word “rollercoaster”, and everyone just nods in agreement.
This seems to have been the case when Nissan (then called Datsun in the U.S.) had to make ads for the 200SX. Totally redesigned for 1980, this was actually a decent driving and pretty nice-looking car and far cry from the strange-ass looking previous model.
Still, they needed something “extra”, so one was obviously helicoptered to the top of some American coaster.
The car just sat there, while in the ad film footage was superimposed to appear to be the view looking out the Datsun’s windshield while it rode the rails and DATSUN VOICE GUY ramped up your excitement. That’s about the best they could do in those days; it wasn’t like they were going to build a real rollercoaster to do this spot. Well, Ford seems to have thought otherwise.
The new-for 1984 Ford Tempo was actually a bigger deal than you might think. The Taurus gets credit for being the “first aero sedan from Ford” but the title really goes to this mid-sized replacement for the boxy Fairmont (which got restyled and kicked upstairs as the “big” LTD). Still, with its carbureted four-cylinder usually taped to a three-speed automatic, it was hardly the thing that dreams were made of.
Formula One legend “Wee Scott” Jackie Stewart supposedly could drive anything around a course and, unlike jab-the-controls Senna, you could almost be asleep in the back seat. Ford put Jackie behind the wheel of a Tempo to do some hot laps, and he made it look easy.
That’s cool, but it isn’t a roller coaster. Imagine the pitch that someone had in a meeting: “hey, you know the Tempo logo has a giant ‘O’ at the end, so maybe we could make this thing to a loop-de-loop in the letter if we make the type like four stories tall.” Was he joking? Did nobody think he was joking? This advertisement proves that nobody did:
Here’s another shot of it:
Let’s slow it down a little and take a still. While we want to believe that the 84 horsepower Tempo accelerated within a few hundred yards to get to a speed to allow it to stick to the inside of “O,” it’s pretty clear that at this point of the shot the car doing the loop is held by tracks or something, seemingly with no driver and likely the internals taken out. Either that, or it’s a good scale model. [Ed note: The Tempo is indeed fixed to the tracks, per Popular Mechanics in 1984, according to Wikipedia – Pete]
Ford had a habit of making these bizarre spots around this era, particularly for pickups as I mentioned in a post a while back. However, I do notice one thing on this Tempo ad: I don’t see a DO NOT ATTEMPT anywhere on the screen. Does that mean if we try it out and inevitably crash, we can sue the Blue Oval for millions?
This fits since Tempo owners were all loopy…ha ha
Worked for an RV dealer in 1997? Had some rental cars. Needed to use one after one of the techs hit my Ranchero with a trailer he was moving!!! While it was in the body shop I had the displeasure of driving a V6 Tempo. Wasn’t fast. Sucked gas. Buried it’s nose on a turn. Color me not impressed.
So much hate for the poor Tempo… I had two second gen Tempos, an LX with an automatic and a GLS with a five speed. Both came with great mark downs, especially the 5 speed which was remaindered and I bought for $8500 new! They both had extremely comfortable power front seats a soldiered on to 90K miles without an issue. Was I embarrassed to drive them? Kind of, but the company paid for them and in truth they were not terrible to drive at all.
The things I hated about those were the agricultural 2.3 that hated revving and sounded like ball bearings in a blender, and the 3 speed auto that kept that loud engine boiling on the highway (what RPM I’ll never know since most didn’t have tachs). Every control sounded like you were snapping the plastic in half, like the turn signal and the sea of identical buttons for the HVAC controls.
The Coen Brothers also liked to put a Tempo upside-down.
I often can’t remember what I went to the basement for, but I remember that there was a performance trim for the Tempo that had two extra horsepower.
I had the HO “High Output” motor, 100 hp as opposed to 98 hp. It was a GLS with a 5 speed, so it had sat on the lot for over a year. I got it as a company car and to be honest, I didn’t hate it. It drove well, gave me 90K miles without issue and had some of the most comfortable front seats of any car I’ve ever owned, including my Lexus.
A buddy in college has a Tempo Sport (it was not in any way sporty). The throttle stuck open one day, and the brakes were so feeble he boiled them trying to get stopped and ended up rubbing it against a guardrail to slow down. Ford quality!
It’s funny that they were so specific when comparing the rear seat room to that of a Mercedes 300D.
And speaking of Mercedes, the cars running around the nearly vertical wall on their test track in Stuttgart were not on rails.
I always wanted to meet the people who preferred the Ford Granada to the Mercedes 450SEL in those ads.
It would be pretty funny to send one of those people around the wall in a Granada.
Best have a bunch of EMTs on hand for the heart attacks.
“I like the shifter on the column and window buttons on the doors like my old LTD. And gosh those seats were hard!”
“I don’t like to feel the road, and I want to steer with my pinky finger”.
Yeah, as seen in this iconic photo with two sedans and a *bus*
https://www.thedrive.com/wp-content/uploads/images-by-url-td/content/2017/04/84f17.jpg?quality=85&w=1920
I had seen a similar picture before, but this one was so much better. Thanks!
And to me, that era, both styling and engineering, was peak Mercedes.
As a teenager in the 90’s, I worked at a full-service fuel station. We had a customer with an early Tempo that was both AWD and diesel.
The first time they came in and asked me to fill it with diesel I had to ask them for confirmation; I was so confused. More than once a customer had asked for a diesel fill because it was cheaper than 87 at that time, but this customer assured me it ran on diesel and not gasoline.
I saw it on the lift once too, and it had an AWD system that had rear half-shafts with u-joints and not the typical CV axle that one would expect.
I’ve never seen another like it.
I once had a gas station attendant start yelling at me though the speaker when I went to put diesel into my diesel Peugeot, then come running out to stop me when I continued to do so. I guess I admire his customer service dedication.
Are you sure they weren’t two different tempos?
All AWD Tempos were the 3 speed auto and gas 4cylinder
All diesel Tempos were manuals, and not AWD.
I’ve seen the AWD version a few times, never a diesel in the wild.
Diesel according to wiki was stick only too. I really doubt the 3spd could be used as top speed was 3rd at redline at 117. Cut the rpm of the engine in 1/2 and enjoy highways barely below redline at legal speeds.
Diesel would have had a taller final drive, had they offered it with the slushbox. Torque multiplication would have made up for it. Sort of – it would have been really, really slow.
Assume that was the same Mazda 2.0l(?) diesel that Escorts got? That was actually a really good motor – the courier service I worked for a couple summers in college got 750K+ out of them. They were not fast, but they weren’t terrible. Lots of torque, shift early and often. I preferred the diesels to the 1.9ls.
Yah, googled after. Sounds ok for the time. Just a bad trans/engine combo w 3spd auto.
Though surprisingly it listed 4,000 rpm for the diesel. Not far off the gas engine’s 5,200.
You never know, these Tempo guys are a bit odd and very determined. I knew a guy whose aspiration was to build an AWD manual V6 Tempo. Same guy that home-brewed watercooling for his computer CPU, he fried the motherboard as I predicted.
His asperation was an AWD manual V6 Tempo? I think if someone told me that I would back away slowly and lock my doors.
Some people just want the shiniest possible version of a turd. 🙂
Was always astounded by the front wheel camber on these, the wheels tucked in like an overloaded twin traction beam F-series.
Dad had a Fairmont and later a Fox body LTD wagon. Amazing how much better the LTD was overall using the same bones. Even as a kid I saw they were the same car.
You’ll first have to find a running Tempo, mate. Difficult shit, that.
Far from “DO NOT ATTEMPT”, the text at the bottom of the GIF seems to imply that many Tempos are doing this during the break-in period, and their owners consider it a problem. Puppies pee on the carpet. Baby humans won’t sleep through the night. New Tempos will drive loop-de-loops.
*I’m willfully ignoring the ‘1983’ part
Old roomate had one of those mid-late 80s tempo’s for a number of yrs. It was loaded up with v6, 5sp, sunroof, etc. He put a lot of miles on it, pretty trouble free.
My Mom, on other hand, had the later generation 94? She had a lot of weird issues with it and she was a very low mileage driver. Control arm or something broke, ac flapper thing broke (whole dash had to come out), stuff like that. Now that I think about it, it might have originally been a rental car, so that could have been part of the problem. She eventually traded it for a Chevy HHR.
They put that same 4 cyl engine in the much larger Taurus too. We had one traded in at the Audi dealer I worked at, when the A/C compressor kicked in it almost stopped moving! With the automatic it took forever to get to 55 or so…..
The “Big” HSC, 2.5 liters, with 88 thundering horsepower!
Wonder if the 2.5 would wakeup w the hso engine head/cam. It was way over cammed on 2.3l. Like no torque below 2,500 rpm. “100” hp though, so just a smidge of low end would fix it.
But you could get the 4cyl Taurus with a stick – the mighty Taurus MT5.
The Tempo 2.3 liter engine was two-thirds of the original Ford Falcon OHV engine.
It wasn’t the same motor. The Tempo had a 2.0 and the Taurus had the 2.5 four, and only for one year.
My mistake, it was a 2.3 liter.
For 1984 the Tempo/Topaz were pretty solid small cars. The problem – a habit for Ford – was not really updating it in meaningful ways over the next 10 years. Sure the AWD version was useful, and adding the Vulcan gave it a bit more power. But they became so outclassed, by the end dealers were advertising Tempos cheaper than Escorts just to get them off the lots.
I’m still waiting for the Mercury Monday feature on the 1992 Topaz XR5.
I think Mercedes or Thomas already covered the XR5!
Sort of. It was mentioned in the Tempo GLS Holy Grails a couple of years ago, but a vehicular achievement like the Topaz XR5 really deserves its own long form article.
Banging the drum for the Topaz XR5 has been my raison d’être for three years now, and I will not stop until my thirst has been quenched.
The summer after highschool my car died but I needed a way to get around so a coworker said she had an old car she’d sell me for $500. Next paycheck I brought home a then 12yo ’81 Datsun 200SX. It wasn’t as flashy as the Starion/Conquest I’d just killed but it had a 5 speed, 4 banger, and 8 spark plugs and at $500 I was willing to do things in this car you wouldn’t in a car you cared about. I never took it on a roller coaster but to this day it’s the yardstick I measure purchases by.
I paid $450 for a rusted out 82 200SX hatchback in 1993. My first car. I drove it about a year and a half and sold it for 400.
An optional All Wheel Drive system became available in the Tempo and Topaz in 1987, and was offered until 1991.
You really wanted awd too. The revised suspension handled better. Engine was rated at 100hp w a peak of 126ft lbs. Reality was 126ft lbs at said rpm was when it came on cam and peak hp was at 5,200 rpm redline.
Oh and rear lsd was stupid tight. Like rear burnout in fwd leaving parking lot tight. So really good in actual awd.
I had the Mercury Topaz that tried to borrow the look of the Cougar of that era with the flat rear window compared to the sloped window of the Tempo. It was the typical first car of my era in Detroit area for Blue collar kids.
My Mom had a Topaz GS as a company car for a couple of years. Present-day me knows it was just a bigger Escort, but teenage me thought it was a big upgrade over the hand-me-down Regal our family used to have. Her next company car – a black Taurus wagon – was an even bigger upgrade.
Oooh the Taurus Wagons. That’s a rare beast I haven’t thought about in a long time.
It was the “L,” which meant black bumpers on a black wagon. Looked pretty sinister. Also had one of those perfect ’80s red interiors.
Then you’re gonna love this:
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1987-ford-taurus-4/
I had three over time as company cars, liked them all!
Ahhh – the Baby Continental.
Had one as a rental in Calgary Canada.
What a miserable little formal roofline penalty box.
To me the original body was better than the updated 88-94 mini-Taurus look, which somehow made the car look smaller. The only issue was the greenhouse with the framing of each side window. Flowing them together with blacked-out pillars like the later design would improve it – which is what the coupes had to start with, and the coupes didn’t really age too bad at all despite more minor styling updates over time. Relatively speaking anyway.
“Does that mean if we try it out and inevitably crash, we can sue the Blue Oval for millions?”
Here’s the plan:
1. Find a double loop roller coaster (for the 00 in NV200 Autopian NYC cab). Maybe the Shock Wave at Six Flags Over Texas?
2. Drive the Autopian NYC cab through the double loop.
3. Sue Ford for damages following the inevitable carnage (Uncle Adrian may be willing to be the driver in this stunt if you agree to letting him out of driving the Rodius).
4. PROFIT!!! Subscriptions are no longer needed!
I like it…a lot
Mr. Clarke asks where does he sign.
The Fairmont was kicked upstairs in 1983 as the *SMALL* LTD, not the big one. Starting in 1983 the big Panther platform car was officially renamed “LTD Crown Victoria.”
Better listen, Bish, for some reason this Scott guy just seems to know what he’s talking about.
One of the few topics on which I can confidently call myself an expert.
Which of course means it’s completely useless except for arguing with other fellow old people on the internet.
I shoulda called that out. Forgot that everyone pretty much dropped the “LTD” part and just called it a Crown Vic pretty quickly.
Which is why Ford officially did the same in 1992.
At least it looked pretty cool for the era, at least IMO. That little sail-panel window behind the C-pillar? How exotic!
It’s like a budget, family-friendly version of the XR4Ti!
The visual puffery in advertising was pretty widespread at the time. I guess it was impressive because we didn’t have AI or CGI, so things like seeing a little person hanging from a hardhat adhered with Krazy Glue was about as krazy as it got.
Even as a kid, I wondered how they shot those Krazy Glue ads. It would be extremely difficult for a human to hang onto a hard hat while supporting their body weight in the manner depicted. There must have been a harness supporting the actor.
There was this show in the 1980’s which featured stories on consumer interest. The name of the show was called Fight Back! With David Horowitz. He and his team successfully recreated the krazy glue hard hat lift using the titular product. So that was very legit. Just know that the hard hat was re-framed inside with metal and there were large handles attached to the sides. The Fight Back! team basically followed Krazy Glue’s own instructions carefully and that was all it took.
I love how an article about the Ford Tempo starts with a bit about a much more desirable and interesting car. I mean, that’s not hard, but still…
Easy: every other car is more desirable and interesting. Except K-cars. Fuck those, give me a Tempo.
Hey, don’t imply the name of the Sierra in vain!
The Ford Tempo…drives like it’s on rails.
Supposedly, Ford abandoned that Tempo sign in the desert, just knocked it over and left it there. I believe it was eventually removed, but it sat for well beyond the end of filming
The Ford Tempo design makes the early gen Toyota Prius (Prii?) look inspired.
It’s no better or worse than pretty much every other vehicle sold in the US at that time.
It was actually a pretty big deal when new. Most sedans back then, even from Japan, still had old school styling with drip rails above the doors and non-flush glass. This is one of the first American car with doors that wrapped into the roof.
The PreTaurus!
Eh, next door there was a K-car, and a Celebrity. So…
At least Ford tried to make the Tempo interesting. You could be Chevy and have a Chevette commercial at a drive-through window.