1989 Mercury Tracer Makes You Feel Comfortable Hugging a Road

Once Ford began building the "world car" Escort and selling it in the United States for the 1981 model year, sacred Dearborn tradition was followed by creating a Mercury-badged version: the Lynx. Then tradition went out the window during the late 1980s, with the Lynx replaced by a car that had no US-market counterpart with Ford badges. This was the 1987-1989 Mercury Tracer, a car based on the Mazda 323-derived Ford Laser from Australia.

When the Escort itself moved over to a Mazda platform for the 1991 model year, the Mercury Tracer became more of a near-identical Escort sibling and less of a Laser.