My father drives a 1992 Mercury Tracer with over 200,000 miles on it; my mother and I have been begging him to get a new one, but he demands that it’s still drivable, and he has it serviced regularly. I still think it’s unsafe. Am I right? I should mention that he and my mother drive often, and frequently make trips of around 350 miles or more in it.
Whoops, I should have said “Cranky stubborn dad NEEDS a new car?”. Sorry bout that.
New cars are safer than early 90s cars. But safety is mostly a matter of how the driver uses the car. If dad drives defensively, he should be fine. If you mean unsafe as in it might fall apart any day now, I doubt it. He has maintained it well, and it will likely run fine for a while. It seems to me that your mom and you need the new car. What replacement cars do you have in mind? How much do you (um, dad) want to spend?
If you visited this site often you would be reading about owners who drive cars with 400,000 miles on them and these cars are perfectly safe because the owners maintained them well.
The Tracer was the first Ford car designed by Mazda, and as such is really a Mazda 323, one of the sturdiest little car ever prodcued.
Safety is really a matter of how much corrosion the car has and how well it has been maintained. If you live in the South or at least out of the rustbelt, the car has a lot of life left in it, provided it has been well maintained.
A friend of my wife inherited just such a car from a West Coast relative. She drove it for two years until the head gasket gave way and totalled the engine. The head gasket problem was partially a result of not flushing the cooling system often enough.
Long trips are very easy on a well maintained car, so let that not be a deciding factor.
If your dad is rich and wants a new car, by all means let him buy one. There will be many used car buyers happy to pick up a bargain, since the trade-in value is small because of the age.
Ask Rachel:
http://growingbolder.com/media/technology/vehicles/romancing-the-road-259598.html#content_tabs
Are you in a position to treat Dad to a new car? perhaps this would work,or backfire badly.
If he has the money for a new car, tell your father that if he doesn’t spend the money for a new car, someone else will do it one day.
Meanwhile be sure to have good towing insurance coverage.
Thank you all for the comments, it is true that my mother and I want the new car partly out of embarrassment; I should mention that although he has it serviced, it has several prominent dents that he has never gotten fixed, and even a couple of small cracks in the windshield. So, let’s just say mom and I aren’t thrilled to be seen in it. Also, they do most of their driving in Oregon and California, so the car has seen a fair amount of sun and rain(it’s parked at night in a garage). I have considered buying them a car myself, but that would get complicated…
I have no problem at all believing that if you bought your dad a car there is a chance he could react differently than one would expect. There would be a couple of “tender” issues uncovered by you doing this, you know your dad better than us, perhaps you throw caution to the wind and do it, you do have Mom on your side.
A '92 Tracer has pretty much -0- value to trade in or sell. So, just buy another car for you and your mom to drive in and let dad keep his Tracer as long as he wants. When he and mom drive together they can take the newer car. When he does his errands solo he can take the Tracer. Insurance on the Tracer would be very little as a second car, with an older driver.
Mom is an adult and can sign all the sale and DMV documents, so she can buy her own car of her choice. If you want to kick in some $$$ financially I doubt mom would object.
Some men bond with a car for no good reason, they just do. No need to upset him by taking away the Tracer. No need for you and mom to suffer embarassement riding in the Tracer either. Get another car. My father-in-law had an old Corolla wagon he loved. It was full of tools and smelled of stale gas. I think it reminded him of the smell of the gas stations he owned and ran before selling them and retiring. Noone else ever rode in that car, but Casey never parted with it. It was in the garage when he passed.
I agree wit UncleTurbo. Some guys of your father’s generation value thrift and trying to get as much as he can out of a car. Let him keep it, tinker with it, etc, and get a new(er) car for your mom.
One thing is for sure: newer cars are getting more complicated and more difficult for the average guy to tinker with. Let your dad keep his pet project…
Triedaq left the computer logged in and unattended, so I will respond. Your father is just like Triedaq. Triedaq bought an Oldsmobile in 1978 that we still have. I rode in the car for years before I finally refused to ride in it. Triedaq now says that it is in his 5 year plan to dispose of the car, but I’ll believe it when I see it. No matter what we get, he always says “I liked the old one better”. I asked our family doctor about Triedaq’s problem and the doctor said it was a health condition called “Geezeritis”. We looked at cars at the Buick dealer and Triedaq asked to see a Roadmaster with the 4 port holes on each front fenders and the straight 8 engine. We had to replace our refrigerator a while back and Triedaq asked to see a Servel gas refrigerator. I have a terrible problem getting Triedaq into new clothes. I read where 90% of men over age 60 are affected with Geezeritis. It’s just something we women have to suffer with.
Mrs. Triedaq
Thanks for getting back to us. Many posters make the initial post and never correspond. There are videos on You Tube that show how old cars fare against newer ones. New cars always win. Your mom would sit in the seat that is destroyed in the Volvo 940 wagon shown in the linked video. If you want to get dad excited about a new car, this might be a way:
Mrs. Triedaq is just jealous because our neighbors have a 1984 Renault Alliance.
Geezeritis…LOL! And, hey, my parents had a Renault Alliance until the brake lines rusted out catastrophically…so be glad you DON’T have one…
Kinda surprised she didn’t say he was looking for an ice box instead of a fridge. 
I believe that geezeritis is brought on by chronic nagging early on in a relationship. As it goes on, the nagging gives way to geezeritis, which could lead to Old Timers if it isn’t taken care of early on. XP
Kinda surprised she didn’t say he was looking for an ice box instead of a fridge.
I think the ice box was great–it was self defrosting. We had neighbors that had an icebox. This was during WW II when new appliances were hard to obtain. The neighbors had a square card that went in the window. It had the numbers 25, 50, 75 and 100 indicating the amount of ice that the ice man was to deliver and put in the box. The icebox not only didn’t use energy as a refrigerator does for the self-defrost cycle, but it absorbed heat from the kitchen rather than adding heat to the kitchen as a refrigerator does. I think that a true tree-hugger would prefer an icebox over a refrigerator.