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Junkyard Gem: 1995 Mercury Tracer Trio

With the rise of Radwood, cars with exaggerated characteristics associated with the 1980s and 1990s are cool again. That means some combination of pastel and/or neon colors, squiggly squeezed-from-toothpaste-tube graphics, nonfunctional decklid spoilers, giant TURBO badging, and kicky youth-centric nomenclature are required if you want your wheels to be considered in compliance with the sacred tenets of Radism. I do my best to find rad machinery while crawling around in car graveyards, and since I came of driving age in 1982 I know a bit about the subject. Today's rare Junkyard Gem shows us the Mercury Division's belated attempt to sell fun cars to rad-leaning youngsters: a Tracer Trio, found in a Denver yard a few weeks back. The Trio package added 310 bucks to the cost of the $11,280 base Tracer sedan (that's about $575 on a $20,925 car in 2022 dollars), and it got the hip-and-trendy young buyer a leather-wrapped steering wheel, seven-spoke wheels, a decklid spoiler and these rad fender badges. I'm going to say that the much louder graphics and candy-cane-colored displacement badges on the Pontiac Sunbird W25 out-radded the Tracer Trio by a mile, but then Pontiac generally out-radded everyone in those days. Even Plymouth got into the act with such radness as the Breeze Expresso and Sundance Duster (we'll overlook the anti-rad Horizon Miser here). Perhaps tellingly, Mercury, Pontiac and Plymouth all got the "Old Yeller" treatment not long after the Rad Era ended. The Tracer name always went on Mercuries built on Mazda platforms, starting with the Australia-built, Ford Laser-based 1987-1989 cars and then continuing with Mexico-assembled, Ford Escort-based 1991-1996 cars. That generation of Escort/Tracer was mechanical twins with the Mazda Protege, itself the bridge between the 323 and the Mazda3. Some Tracers got the a 1.8-liter Mazda engine that was related to the Miata's engine, but this one has the pure-Detroit CVH 1.9. You're looking at 88 horsepower right here; the Mazda 1.8 offered 127 horses. At least the original buyer of this car got the base five-speed manual transmission instead of forking over $815 extra (about $1,510 today) for the four-speed slushbox. As a 29-year-old slacker living in San Francisco's Mission District and driving a hooptie '65 Chevy Impala sedan at the time, I would have taken the manual transmission without the Trio package, had I been forced to buy a new Tracer.

Junkyard Gem: 1996 Nissan Quest XE with 338,549 miles

When I hit the junkyard, I always look for vehicles with impressive final figures showing on their odometers. I find so many Hondas and Toyotas with better than 300,000 miles that I don't consider them especially noteworthy (the exception being super-low-spec cheap models, such as a Tercel or Civic VX), and it goes without saying that the bar is quite high for Mercedes-Benzes as well. It has been surprisingly difficult to find discarded Nissans that made it past the 300k mark; today's Junkyard Gem is just the fourth I've documented. The highest-mile junked Nissan I'd found prior to today's minivan is a 1994 Maxima with 364,238 miles, followed by a 1987 Maxima with 341,176 miles and a 1986 200SX with 309,222 miles. Keep in mind that Nissan didn't go to six-digit odometers on most of its US-market cars until the early 1980s, and then went to tough-to-read-in-the-junkyard electronic odometers in the early 2000s; this means the pool of potential high-mile Nissans is limited to about the 1983-2000 range of model years. Ford has just as much right to claim credit to this van's impressive mile total as does Nissan, since the Quest was a collaboration between Ford and Nissan that also produced the Mercury Villager; this van was built by Ford at the Ohio Assembly plant. The Quest/Villager platform was derived from the Maxima's, and the engine is pure Nissan: a 3.0-liter VG30 V6 rated at 151 horsepower. The only transmission available in the first-generation (1993-1999) Quest/Villager was a four-speed automatic. This one appears to have been sold new at Landrum Nissan in Pueblo. The rear glass has been painted flat black, possibly to keep prying eyes from seeing valuable cargo. The rear seats are long gone, so this van probably hauled cargo for much of its long life. The front interior seems to be in good shape. Why is this van here? There's body damage on the left rear and right front, suggesting a crash that may have bent the suspension past the worth-fixing threshold. Perhaps the crinkled metal just made this van too unsightly, or maybe some powertrain problem was the culprit. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. It's time to expect more from a minivan. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. It's all fun and games until the toddler takes the wheel.

Junkyard Gem: 1991 Mercury Capri

Ford has gotten a lot of use out of the Capri name in the United States. First, there was the Lincoln Capri in the 1950s, followed by the Ford Capri Mk1 (which was sold by Mercury dealers in the USA but never actually badged as a Mercury). Then came the 1979-1986 Mercury Capri, built on the very successful Fox Platform and essentially a clone of the Mustang. Finally, in 1991, the Australian Ford Capri came to the United States. Here is an example of this rare car that I spotted in a Northern California self-service yard not long ago. Mechanically speaking, the 1991-1994 Capri was a Mazda 323 under the skin, complete with a member of the same B-series engine family that went into such cars as the Miata and Ford Escort. So, for a few years in the early 1990s, car shoppers who wanted a sporty Mazda convertible could choose between a Miata and a Capri. The Capri had front-wheel-drive, but could be had with factory turbocharging. These cars were reliable and fun, but had a tough time competing with the Miata in the showroom battles. You'll see the occasional example now and then, but most of the 1991-1994 Capris have met the same fate that awaits this one. Related Video: