Been a while, Im looking to buy my grandaughter her first car and Im not going to spend much more then $1,000 which dont buy much these days.
Craigslist is filled with cars in that range but all need work and have many miles like over 200,000 but it seems theres quite a few Tempos on there with around 100,000 miles in pretty good shape. I know they are not desirable or cool, but are they good long lasting cars or are there any issues ? Thanks in advance.

 

Several years ago, I had a co-worker who had a Tempo. As you already know, it is a car that goes from point A to point B, but that's all he wanted it for. It did just fine for him, and maybe he still drives it, I don't know.
My next door neighbor just inherited one from his mother-in-law who recently passed. His wife uses it as a work car every day. I recently kidded him by saying congratulations on his new car. There was somewhat of a shock on his face, but only for a second or two as he saw that I was smiling. He says his wife only has to fill the gas tank about once every two weeks, but before she had to fill it about twice a week when she was driving a newish Dodge pickup.
My attitude is that $1000 buys you nothing for a vehicle anymore. Even if it turns out to be a complete POS, you really aren't out of too much as the scrap-man would instantly give you about half of that on the spot.
The real oddball Tempo/Topas car would be the AWD versions that I think were only made for a year or slightly more. Another oddball Tempo/Topaz would be the diesel version. On a reliability point of view, I'd probably stay away from either version of those, just because parts are really scarce.
While I'm on the subject, about a year ago I remember seeing a Tempo GT sitting in front of me at a stop light. If the "GT" decal was fake, it was an excellent forgery. The car was in good shape and I'm pretty sure the "GT" logo was genuine. For the life of me, I'm still trying to figure out what sort of sport package Ford would have put on a car of this type to qualify it as a "GT".....

 

The Tempo is a great car, a good friend had one. The 2.3 HSC is an excellent motor, I was always impressed with how smooth it ran, no vibration at idle at all! They were built off the old falcon 17/200/250ci inline 6. But with that being said, they weren't especially powerful.

The body/interior is typical 1990s Ford, not the greatest. I put a couple of switches and an ignition cylinder in it for her, but other than that no real issues.

I'd buy one.

Sam

P.S. I've always wanted to build one with a 302 stroker in it, super sleeper! It'd be an awful lot of work though.

 

Thanks all, the ones I saw were probably the best cars you could get for $1,000 which I know is not much to buy, but none of them had really highmiles and appeared to be in good shape. One of them is a 3.0 V6 which is a good engine like the one in my van and would probably be peppy IMO.

 

There oughta be some 90's era mustangs out there that could be had cheap. I think they were plentiful enough that you might find some in your price range that are in relatively good shape. Just a thought.

 

Shoot a PM to ctubutis, the Mod in the 80-86 & 335 forums.
He has one, and knows them as well as anyone.

 

I had an '85 that I bought used in '87 and we put over 100K hard miles on her with NO maintenance except oil changes and she was strong. I replaced a tie rod end and had some issues with the a/c. That's it.

 

I had a 90 Tempo with the four cylinder that I put over 200K miles on. It was cheap transportation, but not particularly reliable.

My then teenage daughter named it the "Goobermobile", a name that stuck up until the transmission died and I got rid of it.

Unfortunately, we replaced it with a Conturd that I'm still stuck with after more than 200K miles on it.

 

My ex had a Topaz, and aside from being a grandma's car, it wasn't too bad. Two things they are good for: The flange on the exhaust flex joint breaks, but they have a two piece replacement that's pretty cheap and it's a quick fix. The 2.3 eats bearings, but it's fixable. That same car's oil light would come on any time it idled (she'd say it's just a light, I'm not worried!) and when I dropped the pan the shreds of the rod bearings were hanging out of the gaps. The journals still looked good so new bearings and it was all set. I think the transmission was the death of that car, I don't really remember though.

 

I was a driver for an auto transport company in Kent, WA, back in the early 90's - we'd pick up vehicles from the Port of Tacoma and drive them all over the Puget Sound region to various auto auctions, car lots, etc. Most of these vehicles were rental turn-backs from Alamo Rent-A-Car up in Alaska.

I would say that most of the cars we transported were Tempo's - Alamo really seemed to like the Tempo - white ones, in particular... They weren't super high mileage cars - I want to say they get turned back in after 20K miles, but my memory is fuzzy on that detail...

My impression of them, at the time, was that they were a "budget" car but they weren't really all that bad, either. They seemed to be fairly tight - no rattles or excessive noise. As others have noted, they are not overly peppy.

We transported a LOT of Chevy's that were worse than the Tempo's (in my opinion) - I didn't mind the Lumina Euro so much, but I hated the Beretta's and Corsica's; despised the Caprice Classic; and wasn't overly fond of the Cavalier...

 

Growing up my dad had an 87 and a 92 Tempo. The 87 was a 2 door with the cheesy decals that included the "GT" badge. Nothing special about it that I could see…besides it was always in the shop or had one problem or another that needed fixing. He sold that to a neighbor and bought the 92. The neighbor drove the 87 for a few more years then scrapped it and bought a Ranchero (that's a whole nother story).

The 92 was better, I'm not sure the engines that were in them as I was 2 young to pay attention, but both were 4 cylinders. The 92 only needed a set of cv axles and an alternator in the 5+ years and who knows how many miles we had it. The transmission died and that car was scrapped. This was before changing transmission fluids and filter was common or recommended though. Regular fluid swaps probably would have kept this car rolling for a few more years.

That said, I would be pissed if my first car would be a Tempo or Topaz. But then again all of my vehicles were paid for by my blood sweat and tears.

 

The way I see it, if its still running and driving after 15-20 years it was probably a good one.