Junkyard Find: 1988 Mercury Tracer Hatchback
Here’s a rare one! We’re familiar with the 1990s Mercury Tracer that was a Mercury-badged Ford Escort (which was itself a Ford-badged Mazda), but the 1987-89 Tracer was a rebadged and left-hand-drive Ford Laser, a crypto-snazzy Australian version of the Mazda 323. They sold in very small quantities in the United States, and so it took me a moment to identify this example that I spotted last week in a Denver self-service wrecking yard. As an excellent example of “rare ≠ valuable,” it seemed worthy of this series.
Not even 65,000 miles on the clock. Perhaps it sat in a garage for most of its life, barely emerging onto the street.
It was running in 2006, though, because there’s a Colorado State Parks pass from that year on the windshield.
Vaguely sporty-looking yet late-80s generic.
The Mazda B engine, used in everything from Kia Rios to Mazda Miatas.
Just the car for a night of wrestling!
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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It was clever of whomever did the Merc rebadge to only include rear badging on the glass portion. Just some glass labeling can change it to a whole different marque.
This car must have been popular with women buyers considering that most of the reminisces here are not about owning the car, but about women we knew who owned them. And that includes me. In 1989 (I think, +/- a year or so) my girlfriend bought one of these as her first new car. She shopped for it and did the deal herself and she was very proud. It was a really nice car and IMO she was justifiably proud. It was less than a year old when she was driving from her home in VA to visit me in NC in a snowstorm and had an accident. It cost nearly half the value of the car to fix it and she insisted it be done right. Said it was a nearly new car before the wreck and it better be nearly new coming out of the shop. It was. I married her a few years later, but unfortunately the marriage didn't last as long as the courtship, but that car was still giving her great service when we parted ways.