Junkyard Find: 1986 Mercury Topaz GS, Lichen This Car Edition
Would you believe that the last time we saw a Ford Tempo in this series was seven years ago, or that we've never seen a discarded example of its Mercurized sibling, the Topaz? We'll fix that right now, with a Northern California Topaz that served as habitat for a fascinating variety of moss and lichens.
I found this car at the Pick-n-Pull in the appropriately named city of Moss Landing, California. That yard visit was exceptionally productive for my pursuit of discarded automotive history, yielding such machines as a 1984 Grumman-Olson Kurbsite Frito-Lay truck, a 648,928-mile 1985 Toyota Camry, a 434,475-mile 1994 Dodge Caravan, a Volvo Amazon with a heartfelt biography scrawled on its flank, a 1971 Opel GT, a 1977 VW Westfalia Campmobile, a near-showroom condition 1987 Mazda 323 and a 1980 Honda Accord.
Naturally, I had an old film camera with me: a 1940 AGFA Speedex, loaded with weird German document-copying film.
The Tempo/Topaz (or Tempaz) was the replacement for the Fox-based rear-wheel-drive Ford Fairmont/ Mercury Zephyr, and it was produced in two not-very-different generations from the 1984 through 1994 model years.
The Tempaz (which was based on a stretched Escort chassis) wasn't particularly exciting, but it got decent fuel economy and sold well. More than three million were built.
There were Tempazes with Vulcan V6s and even Mazda diesels, but most of these cars got the 2.3-liter HSC pushrod straight-four under their hoods.
The HSC was essentially two-thirds of Ford's ancient 200-cubic-inch Thriftpower straight-six, and it was used in just two applications: the Tempaz and a handful of low-spec Tauruses and Sables. This one was rated at 86 horsepower and 124 pound-feet.
The Tempaz competed against GM's X-bodies and Chrysler's K-Cars and was… a car. The 1986 Topaz GS sedan (the base model) had an MSRP of $8,235, or about $23,691 in 2024 dollars.
The '86 Topaz's base transmission was a five-speed manual (the most affordable '86 Tempos got four-speeds), but the original purchaser of this car paid $448 extra ($1,289 now) for the optional four-speed automatic.
The air conditioning added $743 ($2,137 in current money) to the cost.
This car appears to be a low-mile vehicle that got parked decades ago.
The interior is filthy and covered in cobwebs and mildew, but the seat fabric appears to have been near-perfect when the car stopped moving under its own power.
As you'd expect, rodents made their home inside over the decades.
Coastal Northern California tends to be damp and cool, and a car parked outdoors in the shade can get reclaimed by nature after a while. This one has the sort of of lichen concentration you'd expect to see in the junkyards of northern Sweden.
Lichens are symbiotic combinations of fungi, algae and yeast, and they can thrive on painted steel under the right circumstances.
This car also has plenty of Moss Landing-style moss.
How many species can you find?
It's the shape you want to be in.
The thing about quality is that it doesn't just happen.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
1986 Mercury Topaz GS in California wrecking yard.
[Images: The Author]
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Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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An era of extremely boring, but blandly competent American cars. Tempo/Topaz, GM A-body's, the end of the K-cars. Not a fun bone in any of them but dirt cheap to own, run and maintain. Hertz had a ton of Tempo's back then, if you were a #1 Club member and reserved the cheapest thing they had, they'd usually award you with an "upgrade" to a Tempo or perhaps a Celebrity. Dull, yes. But both had powerful A/C and I remember the Ford's seemed more likely to have cruise control and a cassette deck. Lots or rental miles logged in these, nothing memorable, good or bad.
I was in the rental business in 80s and 90s and I will say the Tempaz did right by me but it was Ugly Duckling rent a car after all...