I bought my 1994 Mercury Topaz in May of 1996 in St. Lazare, Manitoba.  I had been looking for one for about 6 months but my criteria was quite specific.  It had to be a black 1992-1994 2 door with a 5 speed transmission and low mileage.  I found this one in the Auto Trader and phoned the owner.  He said it was black with a blue interior, 2.3l 5 speed, it had 32000km, and it had almost all the available power options, so I booked an appointment to see it the next day.  I took my dad with me to check it out and I wasn't disappointed.  Except for some stone chips in the hood, the car was in showroom condition.  I wrote the owner a cheque for $9000 CDN, drove it home and never looked back.

Since I was still driving my previous car, a 1988 Mercury Topaz L, I parked the '94 until I could find a buyer for the '88.  Well, the car stayed parked for 18 months!  I had a heck of a time selling the '88 Topaz since it had over 300,000km on it and was starting to show it's age.  But once it was finally sold, I was able to plate and insure the '94.  The 18 months of storage took it's toll on the car.  The exhaust system had rotted out and the batter clamps were corroded right off!  Once those were replaced, the car ran like new.  It was hard to believe it was basically the same car as my old 88 Topaz.  The suspension was so much firmer, the steering was tighter and the engine seemed to have more power.  I guess over the course of 300,000km, things degrade so slowly you don't notice it.

I then drove the car for about 2 years putting on 20,000km.  During this time I replaced the front brake rotors and pads because the cheap factory rotors had warped badly.  I also swapped over the stereo system from the 88 Topaz and added new subs and built a custom box and amp rack.  During 1998 I searched high and low for a source for performance parts for this car.  As most of you already know, I found almost nothing.  But in the fall of that year, I found a real gem.  It was the original "Tempo Hi Performance" website on angelfire.com.  There were very few members and not much info, but we managed to scare up some sources for mods.  Thanks to this site I found a supplier for aftermarket sway bars(Addco) and I bought some 16" Cougar wheels.  These 2 mods alone made an incredible difference in handling.

The new-found handling was nice but I wanted some power to go with it, so I began researching my options.  The factory 2.3l HSC was an indestructable engine but there are absolutely no serious mods available for it, therefore I really never considered it for a buildup.  I investigated swapping in a 3.0l vulcan which was a factory option on these cars.  It had 150hp stock and some good torque.  But at the time, I didn't know of a source of performance parts for this motor either, so I might as well have traded my car for a V6 model instead of doing all the work to swap motors.  I went on to other options including: 2.3l OHC, 3.8l SPI(Windstar),  4.0l Aerostar and some others but nothing would remotely fit the car or mate up to a FWD 5 speed tranny.  Then during the course of my research, I discovered a discussion on the SHOtimes mailing list that stated the Ford Taurus SHO and the Tempo used basically the same transmission.  With the only differences being some extra webbing on the case and some stronger internals.  So the bell housing, mounts, axle locations, clutch linkage, shifter linkage,etc were all the same!!  I had never really considered the SHO because I though it would be much too different to adapt to my car.  But subsequent findings all led me to believe that this was the engine I wanted in my Topaz.  Then I found Lance R's website about his supercharged SHO powered Ford Probe and my mind was set.  If this engine would fit in a Probe, it would fit in a Topaz.

It took a few months of looking, but I finally found the perfect donor car for this project in May, 2001.  It was a 1989 Taurus SHO which had been in a frontal collision.  I phoned the owner, verified some details and put a deposit on it so he would hold it for a few days.  I borrowed my dads truck and car trailer and went to pick it up which was about 300 miles away.  Except for the frontal damage, the car was in immaculate condition.  The car even drove onto the trailer under it's own power!  But don't worry, I didn't part out a salvageable SHO, the owner showed me the damage estimate of $7000!!  Apparently the whole front clip needed to be replaced and the frame was bent.  So I pulled the SHO home and thus began "Project SHOpaz" which is detailed in the other sections of this website.  So go ahead and check them out!