(first posted 6/11/2014) When I wrote up the Mercury Mystique a few months ago, I got a twofer; this Mercury Tracer was lurking in the background and Jason Shafer, ever observant, inquired if I’d ever get to writing about it. Of course, I had planned to from the moment I saw it, given its solid condition and relative scarcity, so here it finally is, in all its pale blue glory.
The car hasn’t moved since I first took pictures of it on a bitterly cold February day, and even then it had a thin film on it from having sit for some time. I spoke to the gentleman who owns it; due to health problems, he doesn’t drive it and due to no longer being alive, neither does his mother. I’ve never understood why anyone just lets their cars sit around when money could be easily made for their sale, but I suppose it’s no fun having people call you, poke and prod at your car and then dealing with the hassle of signing the title over. There’s not a ton to be made off of a thirty year old rebadged Mazda anyway, not that profit margins could have been very high when these cars were new.
My guess is that these served as a way for Ford to test the waters for the upcoming, Mazda Familia-based ’91 Escort in addition to face off against cars like the NUMMI-built Nova and the Colt. It also enabled Ford to get their Hermosillo plant, where the five-door version of the Tracer was built, online with a small number of US-bound cars. The Mercury Lynx wasn’t a huge seller, and the Familia was already being sold as the Ford Laser in Pacific markets, so it was as safe an experiment as management could have hoped for. The resulting cars weren’t especially cheap, relative to some of the competition, but they were well trimmed and a good value given that the car upon which they were based was at or near the top of its class since switching to front-wheel drive in 1981 and had remained so after its 1985 redesign.
The Tracer was marketed differently than the equivalent 323, with a fuller array of standard equipment and fewer trim variants than the Mazda, which was available with a turbocharged twin-cam version of the 1.6 liter B-block (speaking of, how many companies have an engine named B-block?) found in the Tracer in combination with all-wheel drive. Given Mercury’s perpetually muddled image, it’s doubtful any such animal would have boosted the brand’s fortunes, that is, if Mazda were to provide such a car to Ford for US sale.
If Mercury’s significance in Ford’s product planning strategy was no more certain than it had been for most of its existence, the same could not be said of the Mazda-Ford alliance at the time, a long running effort no one could’ve seen ending in the late ’80s. At the same time Hermosillo was coming online, Auto Alliance was also in the works, bringing the 626-based Probe to join the Tracer, the upcoming ’91 Escort/Tracer and the Festiva in Mazda-A-Go-Go.
Today, we know Hermosillo as the source of the Fusion and MKZ, but the plant was opened in 1987 as a way for Ford to learn lean-production methods while providing increased production capacity with lower labor costs. By most measures, it’s been a success, with quality and reliability in line with similar products from other plants (i.e. the Focus from Hermosillo was just as plagued with recalls as the Focus from Wayne, Michigan while the Tracer’s reliability was just as above average as its Hiroshima-built three-door counterpart) and continued production today. Ford’s 2010 divestiture of Mazda shares put the latter company in a bind, with a newly-opened (in February) plant in Mexico co-owned with Sumitomo Corporation providing much needed relief and production capacity for Japan’s most export-dependent automaker.
While the Tracer was perhaps the least popular of the Ford-adapted Mazdas, it was a token of good things to come. Dearborn was generous enough not to put its CVH engine in this car, as they did with its 1991 successor, and even though that car was thoroughly competitive, it faced off against more formidable rivals than the first Tracer, which was arguably better than any other domestic compact at the time, as well as the thoroughly dour Sentra (which, by 1991, matured into a rather spry sedan). Unfortunately, Mercury did a horrible job of capitalizing on the car’s actual refinement, instead pitching it–mainly to women, it would seem–as a trusty, low aspiration first car. Even the very compromised 1981 Escort got better treatment as a sophisticated device. If Ford had disappointed small car buyers with that car, sales certainly didn’t reflect such, meaning there was no need to be so modest in promoting the vastly superior Tracer.
It’s still difficult to believe the collaboration between Ford and Mazda ended four year ago. It was a much less toxic relationship than that which existed between GM and Isuzu, for example, or Chrysler and Mitsubishi. Ford had the humility to adapt Mazda’s then-superior small car engineering when developing the second-generation Escort at a time when Cologne and Dagenham delivered a poorly received European model, and when Mazda’s fortunes were at an all-time low, they were given access to a genuinely good C-segment platform to create a car (the Mazda3) which helped keep them afloat in the US market. There were, unavoidably, negative aspects of the partnership but no one could know, looking at this indifferent rebadge, that there was actually a harmonious story behind its existence.
Known here as the Mazda 323 or the Ford Laser ..Mazda chain driven OHC 1.3 or 1.5 (sometimes with a ‘green’ block if you were unlucky) FoMoCo took mine back with a full refund as they could not stop it oil burning, as in copiously (replacing the rings didn’t work) ..so back it went
Just curious (and I’ve tried Googling the term, without success): What exactly do you mean by a “green” block?
I’m pulling this from the depths of my memory (so buyer beware!), but as best I can recall, when a block is cast it takes time to fully harden. If the block is put into service before this happens, then a certain amount of damage can occur.
I associate this with the Y-block Ford engines. It was my understanding that in order to get the engines to market sooner, they designed the blocks with an skirt at the bottom where the oil pan bolts on. This was to strengthen the block and cut down on curing time.
I’ve only heard this in connection with a cast-iron blocks. I don’t know if these had a cast-iron block or not, but it seem plausible anyway.
…that was the term the local FoMoCo dealership workshop manager called it when he spoke to me and advised the company would take the vehicle back and give me a full refund (the car was bought brand new off the showroom floor with essentially zero kms on the clock)..
…he explained to me that the engine blocks were cast in the Philipines and that the finished quality left a block that was ‘porous’.. he said that was what they called a “green block” ..the porosity allowed abnormal amounts of lubricating oil to enter the cylinders… so that visible quantities of blue smoke was seen being pushed out the tail pipe during normal driving essentially… totally unacceptable in a brand new car, let alone even one with 160,000kms on it…
…the next ‘Ford’ i bought had similarly terrible engine problems with the cylinder head gasket blowing on a regular basis ..the 3.9 litre Ford Falcon EA series of 1988…
My Grandparents’ ’84 XE Fairmont Ghia’s engine block had casting issues from new. It gave them two years’ of serious trouble – unacceptable in what was a new and expensive car at the time. It spent a lot of time at the local Ford dealer while they attempted repairs – it didn’t help that it was the EFI model, which was still unfamiliar technology to the dealer’s service department. I don’t know if the block was porous or not, but Ford did confirm after two years of trouble that the block had been poorly cast with oval bores and sand in galleries. I presume they came to an agreement with my Grandparents, as soon after this it was suddenly replaced with an XF Fairmont.
Sand left in water passages was not unknown for the Falcon 6.
The new OHC engine (3.2/3.9L in 1988) for some reason was much more prone to chewing out head gaskets, I think it was simply the differences in expansion ratios between the aluminium head and iron block that did them in. My father’s 1990 did the head gasket right around 100k km and I gather that was fairly typical. They were improved and the length of time before you would worry about the gasket raised to 200k plus within a few years before the problem was gone for good with the AU in 1998. On the surface the engine was ‘the same’ (same dimensions & power output) but I don’t think too many parts were carried over unchanged. That engine used a multi-layer steel head gasket that can be retro-fitted to earlier ones.
My impression is that a “green” block is a freshly cast one. Ideally the casting should be left to weather outside for as long a possible before being machined, as a green block might distort after being machined.
When British Leyland produced the clever 16 valve Dolomite Sprint, some cars gave trouble because the head castings were machined when they were too fresh.
When BMW were turning their 4 cylinder 1500cc production engine into a highly stressed turbocharged F1 race motor, they used old cylinder blocks sent back for reconditioning rather than using fresh castings !
There were lots of them that burned oil from new but more that took 250,000kms to produce that effect.
Nice looking car. I’ve always been a fan of Mercury cars. Fords were plain for my tastes, while Lincoln were too upscale for my tastes.
I remember the first time I one of these in my adult life (I’m sure I saw some when I was a little kid with much less car knowledge). I passed a silver 5-door on the highway. They’re actually really attractive cars in person. Boxy, but still relatively aero sheet metal.
I agree that this car probably had more potential than Ford credited it. Some better marketing and segment positioning could’ve made the Tracer a bigger success.
Perhaps more people would have purchased these if they knew what a Merkur dealer was.
Mercury never realized or exploited the full potential of this car. Not being a fan of compact cars, the number of compacts over time that have impressed me could be counted on one hand with fingers left over. This is one of them.
This is a great find as one has not passed my vision in ages. However, like the ’75 Bel-Air wagon, I might see one in an hour or so!
Nice to see one of these here. These always seemed tighter than the contemporary Escort, and I always assumed it was price that made the Escort so much more popular.
I never paid much attention to these, but it seems to have been as good as anything in the segment at the time. Agreed that Mercury might have done more with it.
Actually, I have always wanted one of these but for only one purpose: to paint with some glow in the dark paint so that it glows at nights like the tracer bullets I always think of whenever I think of this car. Why in the world did Ford name this thing “Tracer”?
Probably because marketing thought the name went well with the other “T” named car in the line up, the Topaz.
Maybe it was so that a person could own a Tracer and a Tracker.
Look at the Ford Car Names then. Tempo/Topaz Tracer T-Bird and Taurus. Did I miss any?
I remember one of my friends bought one of these back in 1988 from some “quick” gains he had made in the stock market in Asia…he traded in his 1983 Dodge Challenger for it
(a car I really liked). The Tracer was OK, and it was a 4 door hatchback, quite different than the Challenger (which was quite roomy for a 2 door coupe). For some reason I remember the seats in the Tracer seemed “stiff” to me (not uncomfortable, but didn’t have a lot of “give” to them). I also remember a lot of “orange” colored indicators on the instrument panel. He didn’t have much problem with it, except for rear alignment (had scuff marks on the tread).
One of my parent’s neighbors still has one (I’m not acquainted with them, but I sometimes see them in it out and about). Guess eventually Mercury gave up on the smallest sized car (kind of like an Escort)…maybe about the time the Focus came out?
Too bad, I thought it was a decent car.
The orange gauge lettering was a classic Mazda trademark from the 80’s.
I had completely forgotten that a 3-door version of this car existed. Tells you how long it’s been since I’ve seen one. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a 5-door in a while either, but much more recently. They were nice looking and very competitively equipped for the time though.
I was thinking the same, you never see the 5 door versions of this car, but the 2 door is almost a myth.
I remember thinking this car had really anonymous styling back then, almost like those de-badged cars from insurance company commercials, the Mercury name is almost invisible on the front, it’s in teeny letters on the edge of the hood, the wheel covers have no markings at all, which makes them look like something that you bought in the automotive dept at Zayres.
Mercury should have thrown in a few bucks and done a cheaper, downscale version of the Sable’s light bar grille for these, it would have at least given them some family identification.
There was probably no reason not to offer a 3 door. Since Mazda offered a 3-door 323, the engineering was already done.
Those 3-door Madzas were very basic. I wonder if that was true of the Mercury, too. I bought a base-model ’88 323 sedan. A friend who liked my car bought himself an ’89 323 3-door hatch, also a base model. My car at least came with a 5-speed manual transmission. His car only had a 4-speed manual. Those four gears had the same ratios as the first four gears on the 5-speed, which means there was no overdrive gear for the little 1600 cc engine. Boy was his car every noisy on the highway.
The automatic suffered the same problem. Mazda had a four-speed auto, but Ford didn’t use it for the Tracer, so if you wanted automatic, you got the three-speed and very buzzy highway cruising.
The Tracer 3 door was equipped the same way as the 5 door, quite nicely with most of the equipment from the top-line 323 LX, plus a few items it didn’t have. Canada got lower-end models that paralleled the 323’s. Mazda used a three-speed automatic in the 323 its first two years (86-87) but went to a four-speed auto for 88-89. Mercury also stuck with Mazda’s 86-87 interior colors in ’88-89.
Wow those tags sure are expired, sitting for so long probably has done hidden damages to this car. I do not think I have ever seen this version of a Tracer, but now I am going to be looking for them.
I contemplated buying one of these. It was late in the ’88 model year, and I had narrowed my shopping to the Tracer and its 323 sibling. I was turned off by the Mercury’s bulbous styling and, given the newness of the plant in Mexico, I decided a Japanese-built Japanese car would likely be more reliable. So I got the 323 (an absolutely stripper base model sedan with just A/C and a right-side mirror as options). No regrets, the Mazda gave me 130k mi. of trouble-free transportation. I sold it because I could afford something more comfortable, not because there was anything wrong with it.
I was driving my 85 GLC when these things came out. I was forever shopping the newer 323 when I noticed the tracer. Comparing low end hatches Mazda to Mercury it was actually pretty nice for its time. Mechanicals and such all being alike the Mercury seemed more plush with an extra inch of Styrofoam under the nicer grade of cloth vs my GLC. I too was turned off though by the 4 door and bulbous backend vs the trimmer 323. I really wanted the 323 GTX with the awd and turbo. But I stuck with my GLC for 226,000 miles.
We rented one on a vacation to Alaska in 1988, and rather liked it. Decidedly better than Ford’s Escort, by a healthy margin. There’s still one or two running around the streets here.
The mid to late 80’s is probably the last time that Lincoln-Mercury dealerships were interesting, you had a line up of Mercury’s that was pretty unique, it just wasn’t all Fords with extra wood grain and chrome grilles like Mercury later became,included the distinct light-bar Sables(not the later chrome grille on a Taurus Sables) 2 rear wheel drive coupes with available 5.0 litre engines, the Cougar and Capri, the big Grand Marquis and the quirky Merkur XR4Ti and Scorpio over in the corner gathering dust
Agreed! I assume you watched the video posted above.
My biggest memory of this car was 10 years ago getting in a fender-bender with one driven by college girl who wanted to pass me in my ’94 Caprice Classic on the left while I was making a left turn (with turn signals on of course) into a driveway… She tried to play the victim and even had an ambulance called to take her away, though later she was still found at fault. The Tracer was left with a huge dent while the Caprice just had a scrape and a popped out corner turn signal.
I actually owned one of these – a1989 1/2 (with red trim on the rub strips instead of chrome) white three door. I bought it based on a Car and Driver review. It was a nice car, which probably deserved better treatment that I could give it, given my limited means at the time(sort of like now) The only real issue that I had with it that could be traced to FoMoCo or Mazda were an appetite for brakes and exhausts(replace every 30k). I kept it for eight years and 100K, and then sold it for $200 to someone who wanted his money back two month later when the engine seized.
I had one of these– a black 1989 with red striped trim and a beige interior. You can tell the 1989s from the 88s because the 89s all had a red stripe on the side trim and the logo on the back window was flush and not raised (as on the blue one in the photo). I remember at the time, JD Power had this ranked as one of the top ten cars for initial quality (or owner satisfaction)–not sure which one. All the other cars on the list were much more expensive. That is actually what made me consider this car initially–to basically get a well equipped Mazda that could be serviced by any Ford dealer for a good price.
This was a great car. It was relatively quick (I used to be able to get the wheels to chirp in second gear) and it got great mileage–probably mid to high 30s on the highway. The standard features were amazing for the time for a car in this price range–dual power mirrors, a little storage compartment under the front passenger seat; dual map lights–even something I’ve seen in no other cars–if you help up the drivers’ side door handle–a little light inside the keyhole would light up so you could see where to put your key in when it was dark. Interestingly, it did not have power steering though–go figure! Another interesting thing–the key said Ford on it, not Mercury–maybe because of the Ford Laser origins.
An acquaintance had the time had an 86 or 87 Mercury Lynx. I went on a two or three hour road trip with him and he was incredibly jealous of the Tracer in comparison.
The car was really reliable. I had it until it had about 120,000 miles with no significant problems, except for a) I had to replace the passenger side seat belt at about 50,000 miles and b) I lost about four or five of these wheel covers. You could go over a fairly minor bump and the wheel cover went flying off. I only got rid of this car because I moved to South Carolina (from the northeast) and the car did not have air conditioning.
A quite pretty design, they were very, very popular here back in the day as the gen2 Ford Laser. My cousin’s first car was a bright yellow ’89 5-door. Interestingly, although Familia/323-based, the 3 and 5 door Laser/Tracer hatches share no exterior panels with the Mazda donor. Instead, they wore much prettier panels designed by Ford Australia. The Laser sedan, station wagon and convertible had identical panels to the Mazda though. This shape Laser/Laser was the high point in the Laser’s life cycle. The gen3, which was the same as the ’91 US Escort, was a viewed as porky and ugly by comparison.
Here’s my ’87 Laser. I bought it used so my kids could learn to drive on a manual. This had almost 200,000km on it when I bought it, and 300,000km when I sold it to my son’s friend, who got another two years of interstate journeys out of it. It was a lovely car to drive, and only let me down when the ignition “black box” developed an intermittent fault – otherwise quite reliable and economical.
My girlfriend all through our sophmore year in high school had one of these in wagon guise! There were lots of “extracurricular activities” to be had in a wagon during the first summer you have your driver’s license. Good times. On the gearhead side, I totally ate up the similarities and shared parts between her ’88 Tracer and my ’86 626. I loved that car, not just for it’s versatility, but I was then and still am now a huge pre-1992 Mazda fan.
Definitely one of the more interesting later-era Mercury cars, and I’m sure it was just as good as this generation 323 (very), but one look at any of these ads would tell you it never had a chance. I actually think Mercury would have been better off if they didn’t advertise AT ALL during their last 20 years or so.
I still notice Tracers every so often on the streets and always do a double take. I constantly forget that they A) exist and B) were a rebadged Australian Ford/Mazda produced in Mexico, rather than a rebadged U.S. Escort. They’re always driven by people who match the description of this car’s owner.
From memory these (well the Ford Laser) were the best selling cars in Australia, built in Ford’s Homebush factory in Sydney that closed in 1994 with the Laser switching to imports from Japan. The wagon version of this car was kept in production until 1994 after the sedan and hatch were replaced in 1990.
The Mercury/Ford Capri convertible was also based on the floorpan of this car.
Ford Australia did ‘designer’ versions of these Lasers too. I remember the Carla Zampatti one in a kind of custard yellow.
This is how I remember it.
The first generation US Escort/Lynx was long in tooth by 1985 in a market that many car manufacturers considered as their future. The competition in this small car field was rapidly evolving and while Japan put out new generations which found favor, Ford had a very popular small Escort that needed to be replaced. Instead, Ford did a major refreshing of the Escort and dropped the Lynx.
For Mercury, Ford put out the Tracer. It was the first of a series of Mazda/Ford creations which were superior to the first generation Escorts. The Tracer, the Festiva and the Probe all had strong modern engineering that was very new for Ford. The Tracer was obviously a mildly restyled Mazda 323 and it was available as a two door hatch, a four door hatch, and as a wagon. So, instead of having the refreshed Escort, Mazda had the new Mazda based Tracers. After a short model year, the Tracers were issued to fleet buyers like Hertz and Budget and these were the entry points for most of the used Tracers seen over the next decade. The Tracer was very well received by the motoring press and public. The key however, was the showroom competition which existed between the Tracer and the Topaz. There was still a lot to like regarding the Topaz, especially the low price. This handicapped Tracer sales.
Within a year, the Tracer was joined within the Ford family with the Ford Festiva, which was a Mazda 121. At the same time, Ford introduced what was originally to have been their Mustang replacement – the Probe, alongside the Mazda MX-6. The Mustang based Capri was phased out as planned, but die-hard Mustang fans prevented the Probe from replacing the Mustang, causing another showroom competition showdown between the Mustang and the Probe. Also recall at this time, the same situation at Toyota between the Supra and the Celica. In both cases, the auto manufacturer wanted to cover both bases if their new front wheel drivers failed to find an audience.
Once again, the Festiva was a back-up in case the market warranted a car smaller than the first generation Escort, and if the heavily refreshed Escort from the previous year, failed to hold its own against the Japanese competition.
Overall, we saw during this time Ford trying to bring new automobiles into their showrooms, keep their traditional buyers coming back and yet bring Mazda into the model mix. What Ford did was create three showroom contests between six of their models.
Within a few years, Ford had readied its second generation Escort, which for Mercury, took the Tracer name. With this, the Mazda 323 Tracer/Laser was phased out. The Festiva continued until it was transformed into the Ford Aspire. The Aspire was 600 pounds heavier than the Festiva, but didn’t have the manual 5-speed necessary to transport all that weight. While it was a Festiva updating, by incorporating all the options Ford felt the original car lacked – the Aspire ended up being too much car on the little Festiva chassis and engine. Where the Festiva shone, the Aspire was an utter failure.
With the newfound success of the Mazda Miata, Ford/Mazda brought over a two seat convertible, sold in the US as the Capri, since by that time the Mustang-based Capri had been eliminated, and Ford didn’t rebadge the Probe-based MX-6 as a Mercury Capri. As with the Aspire, what Ford discovered, was when you take a popular car with a manual transmission and little room, then listen to the focus groups asking for automatic transmissions and small parcel shelve back seats – you end up with a compromised car that satisfies no one in the market. What the Miata had, the Capri lacked and sales never took off, even after several attempts to relaunch the car.
By 1995, these Mazda/Ford hybrids had worked their way through the dealerships and rental car fleets across the USA. By that time Ford had found enough home-based successes with their third generation Escort/Tracer, and discovered at the same time the tanking of the entire small car market in favor of the SUB boom, that there was no more interest in exploring new marketing opportunities. What was created during the previous generation was based on an assumption that small cars were going to be the only game in the auto business. When Boomers discovered the SUV and the market discovered the immense profits the SUV brought home – the new gold rush was on for the next decade.
This left the interesting small car, Mazda/Fords to history.
Wow. This model in three-door guise was technically the first automobile I ever drove. Mother’s younger brother was a Lincoln-Mercury salesman in ’88, and this was the first of his demonstrators to which I was handed the keys (before being licensed to drive).
I vividly recall the illuminated lock cylinder on the driver’s door, as well as applying waaaaaaaaaaaay too much pressure to the brake pedal when stopping in the driveway.
I know this comment is kinda late, but my ex and I owned one of these back in 1989. We actually had the five-door wagon version. We had looked at the Escort, but, honestly, the Escort looked okay outside but the inside looked and felt like a tractor once you turned the key.
We bought this as a Mercury “company car” and, as a condition of sale, had the salesman go to the Mazda store to install a cargo cover (it wasn’t on the Mercury option list but the one from the Mazda dropped right in).
Ex had to drive an automatic, but the car was reasonably peppy by the standards of the day. Quiet enough around town but the three-speed slushbox did make it buzzy at speed. Gas mileage wasn’t bad; handling was decent. The cargo bay was a big box so it would hold a surprising amount of stuff. All the controls operated with Japanese smoothness and precision. And the car had more “toys” than one expected to find in a small car (power almost-everything, lots of little lights and cubbies around the cabin, etc.). It felt much more expensive than it was.
We had that car for six years. I don’t recall having to fix much on it — beyond the transmission, but by then we’d put almost 100,000 miles on the car beyond the miles it acquired at the dealership. We cut a deal with a friend of mine who worked at ADP to find a junker tranny we could put in. It worked but by then ex was making noise about getting a bigger car.
We sold the Tracer to a guy a few blocks away who was a housepainter. I know we saw that car, full of paint cans and with ladders on the roof, running around for at least a couple of years before we moved away. Nice car. Mercury definitely sold it short.
If it was the car his mother drove, he may be keeping it simply because it was hers, as a way to remember her. I’ve seen this once or twice before.
I had an ’89 Tracer 3-door in this same color. The bumpers on all Tracers turned the same sickly shade of light grey as the car seen here; Armor All would restore the original dark shade for a few months.
This article implies only the 5 door was built in Hermosillo, but actually all three body styles were built there for U.S. export. Canadians got their Tracers from Taiwan, and got them a year earlier (1987) and with some lower-end trim level choices. Also, Mazda also offered a largely forgotten 323 GT sedan with the 16 valve turbo but without AWD.
I think this, in sporty LTZ version, made C/D’s 10 best list at least one year. That may have been the last time a Mercury product made the list. Not a lot of 10 best Mercurys.
I remember that a lot of the reason for the Escort doddering on was that is was needed for CAFE standards to offset the heavy, profitable vehicles like the Panthers and the Trucks. I bet Ford lost a fair amount of money on every Escort but needed to sell them in vast numbers to meet CAFE standards. It was probably too expensive to engineer a better small car domestically, so Ford logically farmed out the 91 Escort to Mazda.
Well, you say, Honda and Toyota make good small cars and sell them over list! Why couldn’t Ford?
A) In 1988, Ford had European operations, Australian operations, and joint ventures in other countries. In North America, they sold the Festiva, Escort, Tempo, Taurus, Crown Victoria, Mustang, EXP, (was that still kicking) F150, Aerostar, Ranger, Mercury variations, and Lincoln variations. Honda had the Civic and Accord and Prelude and Acura variations and CRX. Ford’s bread and butter was midsized sedans and the perennially best selling F150. Ford didn’t have its heart in a dubiously profitable product when it could invest in an almost guaranteed profitable product. The Japanese could be more focused with their development money. Their cars were more similar worldwide as well.
B) a lot of Japanese profits came from the Voluntary Import Restrictions. Limiting the number of cars meant that they sold at artificially inflated prices so they were more profitable.
C) Ford didn’t really have its heart in small cars and hadn’t exactly set the world on fire with efforts dating back to the Pinto. Honda customers were faced with the choice of an Accord or Civic in a small sedan. If Ford made its small car better, as it did with the Contour/mystique, they would be more expensive, and then Ford buyers would say, gee, I can get a Taurus for the same price! I’m betting a lot of possible Tracer buyers looked at the tracer and the restyled Topaz (which was good . . . looking. Didn’t have too many other redeeming features though.) and decided for a few more bucks, they could get the Topaz.
Ford cut the Sable off at the knees fairly shortly into its run when Ford decided number one selling car in America over the Accord/Camry was a desirable goal. Ford pushed the Taurus and stifled the Sable. I wonder if that’s what happened with this car due to CAFE regs?
This was the first time someone decided Mercury should be a brand targeted to women, which seems odd to me. No other manufacturer has come up with a female- targeted brand.
This car deserved better and Mercury deserved better. Almost ANY effort by Ford might have succeeded, but none was made.
> I think this, in sporty LTZ version, made C/D’s 10 best list at least one year.
If it did, then it was the subsequent generation Tracer that debuted in 1991. This generation wasn’t sold in LTZ or any other sporty trim, just a single well equipped model. (Canada got three trim levels with the top trim being similar to the U.S. version).
I recall that captive imports like the Tracer did not count toward the main CAFE average number. This was intended to prevent U.S. manufacturers from importing a few Chevy Sprints or the like to offset homegrown gas guzzlers, but it created a loophole that you could increase the main CAFE figure by sending manufacturing of big sedans to Mexico so they qualify as captive imports.
20 years ago, in Australia, if you threw a rock – you’d hit one. Trim levels were reversed here. The Mazda was a more valuable, better trimmed car (common with sun roofs for example). The Ford nearly always the budget alternative – probably (guessing) selling 10 Lasers to every 323. Saying that, Ford wasn’t adverse to slapping Ghia badges and velour inside to cater for those who had to have a (posh) Ford.
I had a 3-door, manual trans with power windows/door locks and aluminum wheels. It was fun to drive, economical, comfortable, relatively roomy, and trouble free. Loved it. It’s only quirk was the then-Japanese habit of having to hold up the outside door handle while closing the door in locked manner (are having to use the key to manually lock the door).
The CT18 program was a test of the claimed benefit of Japan’s design for assembly. If it worked for an all new work force in a country not known for quality manufacturing, then Ford would replicate it… and replicate it they did. The ST16 Probe was the next step… by having Ford’s supply base and internal component operations deliver parts to Mazda’s product development process and quality requirements.
These Mazda Fords were good cars a friend recently replaced hers it had nearly 400,000 kms racked up and still drove ok it just couldnt pass inspection without lots of money more than it was worth being poured over it, I followed it the wrecking yard in her new car and it wasnt blowing any smoke the engine was still healthy and it has been seen since on the road the junkyard likely had another one and produced one roadworthy car from two heaps.