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?
Family friend had one – she happily referred to it as a dumpster with wheels.
We had a 84 GL 5-speed. These were good in theory, and right for the time, but the reliability was terrible at first, and gradually got good as the car got older and way behind the market. Teenage me appreciated the back seat which was far roomier than the 70’s Buick Regal “colonnade coupe” it replaced, and the trunk was bigger too, or at least more useful. It died on us twice during a 10-day roadtrip. The early engine electronics was atrocious. That’s the kind of b.s. that put my parents in the seats of Hondas and Subarus until they went to their graves.
Fu-k you Ford for ever foisting the Tempo on us.
The worst, most hateful, awful, joyless Dementor of a car ever made.
If you were in prison, given a wool shirt and nothing to drink but muddy water and Nutriloaf mixed with sawdust, you’d be happier than having to drive a Tempo.
Some cars serve as inspiration; others serve as a warning.
At least the Cimmaron was part of a hustle; everyone knew it was a dolled up J car. The Tempo was just Ford being needlessly cruel.
It’s like the Tiki from the Brady Bunch. That car is Schleprock without the friends.
If one needed to punish a car enthusiast, forcing them to drive a Ford Tempo would be cruel and unusual. For the truly depraved, we have a light blue, 4-door Chevrolet Citation.
TDI, I appreciate your sentiment, I have a burning hatred of the Tempo/Topaz, and have posted about it before. But the Citation was a different animal. It was, in theory a good idea and something novel. There is always nobility in a good effort. But the Tempo/Topaz was born of the sweat from Satan’s Taint…
A college friend had an AWD Tempo in Houghton, MI. This was I believe a 1988 in around 1997-1999. He got it used and was in decent shape when he got it. So slow, not sporty but it was reliable at that time and did not get stuck once he threw some used snow tires on it. Have a memory of a 500mi trip back from college in it, blizzard conditions in the Upper Peninsula of Mi. Vehicles off the road, but its seats seemed comfortable, and it just kept going down the road in awd, got us home safe.
It ran when parked, but the rust just ate that thing up into nothingness. The passenger seat would get kinda squirmy from rust on floorpan and seat mounts when you hit big bumps, funny yet scary…
My dad bought a 1985 Tempo GL that I inherited in 91’ when I moved away to college. That car took me all over Minnesota. In the winter sometimes the PVC valve would freeze shut which was a problem but otherwise it was reliable if a bit boring. It made it over 100,000 miles. I drove it through a blizzard in 97’ and it never really recovered (too much snow and ice got into the engine compartment). Traded it in on a 93’ Probe that summer.