1997 Mercury Tracer LS review from North America

The horn malfunctioned and started going off on its own at around 80,000 miles.

The car was taking on water in wet weather from somewhere; it had wet carpet mostly on the front passenger floor.

At about 120,000? miles, the trunk began to need extra effort to make sure it was closed. You'd think it had closed and it would come up again, so you had to put it down harder.

At 175,000 miles, the engine died, long overdue, and all I remember is it was not running on all cylinders and seemed choppy and underpowered. We sold it then to a wrecker and got a newer car. But we were extremely happy with the Tracer and still look back on it fondly.

Once at 110,000 miles or so, the shifter wiring malfunctioned and it was impossible to get it out of Park. This was fixed easily like most problems with this car.

This was an extremely dependable car, and never left us really stranded. It always tried to die at home within easy reach of repair & parts. (How does a car know that?) It was cute, it never leaked oil, the A/C was great, and it had a great turn radius. (I wish I had that turn radius now.)

That car went a long time without its scheduled maintenance; we were not in the financial situation to afford it for a seriously long time. It always seemed to "know" we would do it when we could, and it went a long time without. We drove this car a lot of hard miles, and it came through every time. We were still thankful for this even when we were stuck home and getting rides to auto dealers to try to replace it.