(First Posted September 25, 2013) By now, it seems that Volkswagen has tried almost everything to find success in the American market. The original VW (which we covered Here) was a true “Peoples’ Car” (the German translation of which is “Volkswagen”). Since then, it has built sports coupes, sports sedans, buses, campers, SUVs, pickups, vans, and even a super-luxury sedan that stickered out at or near six-figures. For good reasons, or sometimes otherwise, many VWs have been quite memorable cars, but others have been quite forgettable. Today’s car is among the latter.
VW made its mark (many, many Marks, if we may speak monetarily) in the low end of the market. The Beetle was the car that put West Germany on wheels after the Second World War; shortly thereafter, it took over the lower end of the American car market as well. It was a simple vehicle, much more so than many thought could be successful here in the States–particularly considering it came from a country that had been our foe during two massive wars still within memory of many car buyers. However, the Beetle was so well-built and offered such value that it slowly built a following and, against all odds, came to own the entry-level market.
By the early 1970s, the Beetle’s days were numbered, at least in its home country and in the U.S. More modern and capable vehicles from several other countries were now slowly displacing the venerable bug. By the time the Rabbit debuted in the U.S., as a 1975 model, shoppers for an inexpensive new car had many good choices, few (if any) of which were available at Volkswagen dealers. The Rabbit, although small by American standards, was far from inexpensive; still, it proved to be a very popular car. VW’s pricing problem lay with the vehicle itself: the Rabbit (Golf elsewhere) was not really designed to be a cheap car and the exchange rate between the German DM and the U.S. Dollar only compounded the problem.
By the time the 1985 Golf Mk II came along, VW dealers were trying to carve out a niche by offering cars that delivered the experience of a German road car at a lower price than a BMW, Audi or Mercedes. (Actually, has VW ever figured out a better-working niche since then?) The new Golf and Jetta were inexpensive by German-import standards, but for someone not part of the leather-driving-gloves set, they still cost a lot of money. For example, my 1985 GTI (with air, sunroof and stereo) stickered at over $12,000. That sounds like quite a bargain now, but at the time that kind of money bought a decently equipped Crown Victoria. What’s more, there were plenty of American and Japanese companies selling cars in the $7,000 – $9,000 range. To top (or bottom) it off, the 1986 Hyundai Excel was advertised at a $4,995 base price, and the new Yugo was priced $1,000 below the Hyundai.
The Peoples Car company had a solution. In 1980, VW had introduced a car built in Brazil and unique to the Latin American market–the VW Gol. Yes, the Gol. The Gol, covered a bit here, was the first version of the VW BX front-drive platform, which borrowed heavily from the earlier Audi 80/Fox (CC Here). Two of the most significant differences were the Gol’s shorter wheelbase and its use of a longitudinally front-mounted Beetle engine. Within a few years, the car evolved to make use of a variety of water-cooled gasoline and diesel power plants. VW decided that one of the higher-content versions of the Gol, a car introduced in 1983 as the Voyage, would make a perfect modern-day Peoples Car for the North American market.
The 1987 Volkswagen Fox showed up in the U.S. in the late summer of 1986. How did it fit into VW’s grand scheme for the American market? Maybe some of you know, but I have never figured it out.
First, the car was built in Brazil, presumably to counter the exchange rate problem that had made late-’70s European cars so expensive in the U.S. Was there anything wrong with importing a VW from Brazil? Not really, except that at the time, “German-ness” was really the only thing bringing folks into VW dealerships. The VWs built in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania seemed to suffer a bit of reverse-snobbery among Americans. Whether true or not, the German-built cars were reputed to be better than their American-built counterparts. A Brazilian-built VW (particularly one never offered in Germany) seemed to have one strike against it even before it was unloaded from the carrier.
The Fox was offered in two- and four-door sedan versions, as well as a nifty two-door wagon. Now, I loves me a good two-door station wagon, and I suspect that there are probably another three-thousand people in the country who agree with me. Two-door wagons had never sold well in the U.S. in the ’50s and ’60s, and to introduce one in the era of mandatory child seats was, well, an interesting idea. That aside, any line of inexpensive cars in the 1980s without a hatchback and a four-door wagon had just swung the bat for strike two.
The Fox did have one positive: Its initial base price of about $6,100–about a grand over a Hyundai–still undercut the cheapest Toyota Corolla by quite a bit. However, a comparison shopper could see right away where the differences lay. Was it a problem that the car came with only a four-speed transmission? Sure, a five speed was later added, but never was an automatic offered on the Fox during its entire American run– not exactly a recipe for success in the U. S.
Also, Toyota had built up a reputation as the kind of car you could drive and forget about until it was time to trade in. Since the advent of water-cooled engines, VW has never been able to earn that kind of reputation for itself. It may not have helped that the Fox was powered by pretty much the same 1.8-liter four as the Golf and Jetta–not that it was a bad engine, but when other brands were offering 1.5- and 1.6-liter engines in their economy cars (and with five-speed transmissions, no less), the Fox was probably not all that economical either.
These spring towers in the cargo area mean no 4×8 sheets of plywood for this wagon.
In the car’s favor, it did offer a fairly good fun-to-drive quotient within its price class. Nevertheless, VW never did seem to catch on to the idea of marketing the car’s Audi roots at a budget price. And where the larger cars came in GTI or GLI trim levels, the Fox never got that kind of love from headquarters. From 1987-90 (the years the wagon was offered) the Fox sold about 104,000 cars, or about 26,000 units per year on average. After the line was pared down to two lightly refreshed coupe and sedan models for 1991-93, VWOA sold another 60,000 cars.
I was a VW owner when the Fox hit the showroom, and I was mildly intrigued by the little car–not intrigued enough to trade my GTI for one, but I hoped that the Fox would find a market. Alas, the Fox embodied every one of the mistakes that VWOA has continued to make in the American market. For a company trying to sell Fahrvergnugen, offering North American buyers a poorly equipped vehicle not good enough for Europe was a fail.In the late ’80s, German austerity minus the German driving experience did not sell here. It still doesn’t. Add in the fact that it didn’t particularly distinguish itself from a service and repair standpoint, and we have a car that was never seen all that frequently when new and has virtually disappeared from the rustier parts of North America.
For all its failings, there is still something about this little red two-door wagon that calls my name today, just as it did in late 1986. Had VW found a way to make this more of a little driver’s car, with all of the Fahrvergnugen at a lower price, it might have had a hit on its hands. But VW was trying for cheap, basic transportation. A Peoples’ Car. But a true Peoples’ Car must either be durable and cheap to repair like a Cavalier, or have deep-down quality like a Corolla or Civic. The Beetle, of course, was both of those things. The Fox, however, was neither, and it faded quickly. Usually, a fox is considered a predator. This one turned out to be the prey.
Ask and ye shall receive apparently (see my comment on the Audi Fox in an earlier article). Was THIS the ultimate CC effect?
The Fox essentially was a cheap echo of the Audi Fox, and it scooted along pretty briskly with its 1.8. A lot of folks rather liked them for what they were, and compared to the cheapest cars on the market then (Hyundai Excel) they were by far the best import driving experience for the buck by a long shot.
There are a significant number of VW Foxes still on the roads here in Eugene. I suspect that they’re pretty easy to keep running, for anyone generally familiar with water-cooled VWs, and that their relative simplicity is in their favor too.
I test drove new Foxes back to back with a Ford Festiva L. The Festiva suffered from much less understeer, had better seats, shifted like a Mazda, reved like a Mazda, and was about as quick in spite of the smaller engine. The Fox was better than a Hyundai though. I never drove a Yugo for comparison.
Good point about the Festiva, but it was considerably smaller, for what it’s worth.
My Festiva LX is still on the road with over 350,000 miles on it, buzzing around central Illinois. I traded it in after 240,000 a decade ago, and it is still going. A buyer needed to have sprung for the LX models which came with the better tires, but the LX model only appeared for 1988 with all those bells and whistles. Ford started stripping it down to boost sales and I think the good tires went along with the other high end options.
My Festiva L came on 145R12 Yokohamas. I got 3,500 miles out of the fronts and 6,500 out of the rears. All the replacement tires I found locally were 155SR12s, although the OE tires for the LX were 165/70R12 Yokohamas. I never saw a car with 12 inch tires that weren’t 155SR12s after the OEs wore out. The best ones I bought were Continental CS21s, as the Pirelli P4s used to heat up and chunk during my commute on a road called 21 Curves.
Of course, the Festiva was a Kia. I had an LX (or was it GL?, the model with the red stripe on the black rub rails) and it was a wonderful little car with the lousiest tyres you’ve ever driven. Yokohama’s, and I swore they were made of bakelite. Spun the car out a couple of times in the rain, without driving agressively.
According to sources, the Festiva is actually the smaller Mazda 121, probably with a few changes to fit N American standards – and to cheapen it a bit more perhaps for the price ti sold at. I would imagine with some decent tires on it, it’d have handled much better.
Never drove the Festiva, but always liked their looks.
Did drive a Yugo though, and while crude and such, it had its charms but since I’ve never driven an older Fiat, ne the 128, nor the European 127 for that matter (both FWD), I can’t say how much of the translation from Italy via Yugoslavia, the Yugo lost by the time it arrived on our shores.
The Ford Festiva IS a Mazda 121 built by Kia for Ford and variants of it are still in production.
I test drove the Fox against the Festiva as well. The Festiva came loaded with everything, and the Fox was stripped. Since I absolutely needed a five speed, air conditioning, and a nice comfortable interior – I dropped $6999 for the fully loaded Festiva LX and it was a fantastic and fun car for 12 incredible years. Plus 50 miles per gallon. Mazda engineering with Ford dealer support.
I remember the non-car car magazines (Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, etc.) had a field day doing three way tests between the Fox, Hyundai Excel and Yugo GV – all which were being sold as the cheapest new transportation you could buy.
Never had one of these, but I unsuccessfuly tried to talk my youngest sister into buying a (used) one in the 80’s…probably not the best idea in retrospect for her…she ended up with a 1985 Nissan 200sx, which for her especially I think was a much better choice. I liked the idea of simplicity for her (a student at the time) but she wanted more luxury. I owned a Golf at the time, but I really thought the Fox was the spiritual descendant of the Beetle (in terms of simplicity) though I’m not sure how well these were assembled.
I now own a Brazilian made Golf, and despite my initial second thoughts, it seems as well (or as poorly) made as any of my other VWs. I’ve had 3 thus far, one from Osnabrück, one from Westmoreland, and this one from Brazil (never had one from Wolfsburg yet though).
Interesting to me that they took the drivetrain from the Dasher/ Audi Fox instead of from the Golf…it would seem to be that the Golf/Jetta drivetrain (transverse) would befit a smaller car better than the Dasher/Audi Fox (longitudinal). But I guess the exercise was to extend the life of the tooling for that drivetrain, so it could be sold less expensively. But didn’t it also go into the Quantum/Audi 4000 which I think were also longitudinal? They went to transverse in the next (Passat, Audi 80) generation…but too me it was odd that the VW Fox drivetrain was more related to the midsized Dasher than it was to the smaller Golf. Makes me wonder what is next (rear mounted longitudinal water cooled…since they already have a “GOL” they could call it the “F”?)
The original B1 platform wasn’t all that big, and it was shortened for the Gol. Undoubtedly, the reason VW sent the tooling for it to Brazil was that the B2 platform was launching in Europe then, so it needed to go somewhere. It’s an old and common practice, to send the old tooling to Latin America or such.
Wonder how much modification was done for the B1 platform for the VW Fox? Was the VW Fox smaller than the Quantum/VW Fox (I would guess so).
The VW Fox body styles seemed different than the Dasher/Audi Fox, though the Audi also seemed to have the ubiquitous 4 door sedan, the VW Fox 2 door wagon seemed to be on that model alone.
Like you say, the tooling for older models often gets a second life…in case of VW, often in Brazil, but also China and Mexico (as in the Beetle, which I think was last produced in Mexico).
The B1 was actually introduced in Brazil with a little delay to Europe, it was not just old tooling sent abroad.
I bought a new 1987 Fox GL sedan in ’87 and hammered the crap out of it for 5 years. I racked up 110k miles, many of them delivering pizzas, with only two issues the whole time- a cooling fan sensor and a strut bearing. Other than that it was completely reliable and a blast. It was a torquey 1.8 in a really light car and I averaged high 20’s in town and low 30s on the freeway- not bad for a 4 speed. On one stretch in Utah I even got 38. I sold it in ’92 for $2500 and last I heard the original clutch had finally gone out at 150k. The car felt very solid and well-built the whole time- especially for $6700!
The 1.8 liter engine wasn’t a problem in 1987. Gas was practically free. The four speed wasn’t a big deal either, as other base cars still had four speeds. Even Honda Civics had them. The Fox was a hit in my home town. Its undoing was that they fell apart in short order. The steering wheels backed off of the steering columns on most of the Foxes that friends of mine had, something I can’t recall any other cars duplicating until Chevrolet rebranded Daewoo. That being said, the small percentage of Foxes that didn’t disintegrate during their first few years on the road turned out to be some of the most durable VWs.
Chrysler sold a fair number of Omni/Horizon America models with the 2.2 engine, with EFI added about the same time, 1987 I think, as the “America” (“Expo” in Canada) name was added and the price cut (my mom bought hers the year before…) and warranty extended from 5/50 to 7/70.
It had the reputation for being the only bargain-basement car with an automatic that wasn’t a complete penalty box to drive, and being downright quick with a manual, while not getting dinged at all for fuel consumption.
CJ,
I don’t know for certain, but I do think Honda finally did away with the 4Spd manual at some point prior to 1984, and even then, it was only for the base Civic. By the third gen Civics, I think they only offered the 5spd, I know as I test drove a base 85 Civic, and if memory serves, it had the 5spd. My 83 Civic 1500DX hatchback had the 5Spd manual.
I can’t say for certain how many others had 4spds, but by the mid to late 80’s, with maybe an exception or so, I don’t think anyone offered anything but the 5spd in their cars (out side of the Brazilia Fox and the Yugo) that I’m aware of.
EF Civic hatch 88-91 had 4 speed. 88.5-90 Escort Pony was also standard with 4-speed.
I shopped the segment in summer of 1987. The Civic DX 4-speed still existed in advertising, but my local dealer was intent on convincing me that I wouldn’t be able to drive on the highway if I bought one. Considering the speed limit was still 55 mph, I guess he really didn’t want to sell a base car with A/C over the alternative of not selling me a car. I think the DX was as cheap as the other cars I looked at. It just didn’t seem to be available. I wound up with a Festiva L with A/C and an AM/FM stereo that I replaced with an aftermarket cassette deck in about a week. A Civic LX would have been several thousand dollars more expensive.
I drove a base model 1988 Mazda 323 hatchback with a 4 spd manual. It was a “great little car” even though it was quite austere inside – roll-up windows, monochromatic vinyl interior, no standard radio. I bought it cheap with a year of factory warranty left. If I remember correctly, I picked it up for $4,000. I drove the crap out of it and sold it with 165,000 trouble free miles.
I had a 1985 Mazda 323 base model with a 4 speed.
I think the issue for many buyers was not that the Fox didn’t have a five-speed, but that you couldn’t get an automatic at all. For something intended as a cheap commuter car, that was a big handicap. I don’t imagine an automatic (particularly a three-speed auto) would have done the Fox’s performance any favors, but of course that wasn’t really the point…
Nice how you managed to get a dig on GM for a defect that never affected more than, what, two cars? How many hundreds of thousands of Hondas were recalled this week? LOL!
On topic: I really, really wanted to like these cars, but could never warm up to them. Even as low priced as they were, they seemed rather stark, or supremely low-rent. I can remember driving these things when I was selling cars 20 years ago, but nothing really stands out about them.
I thought the concept behind them was great, a true low cost VW in the vein of the Beetle. But where I was, the dealers all thought they were smaller GTIs and GLIs and priced them accordingly. Which is to say too farkin high! By 1992 these things were lot queens and the lease deals were thick to try and move the metal, at least in Atlanta where I was living at the time.
I think the time has come again for a cheap VW, but not the whole line. This is where the contemporary VW marketing has gone off the rails. ALL of the cars look cheap now, and totally non-descript. They need a cheap and cheerful car, like Fiat has with the 500 (well, it’s relatively cheap).
Maybe they can find a way to launch the Skoda or Seat brands in North America. But then again, another riff on the MQB chassis will be noticed pretty rapidly.
Maybe the current Gol? The Up!? The Polo?
I had a pal with one of these. First car I ever chirped the tires, dumping the clutch in first.
I’m beginning to appreciate how profoundly American currency debasement (Cold War+Great Society+Vietnam) affected the motor industry:
– The qualitative cheapening of domestic models to prevent fall-off in demand (some have noted this happening with Cadillac, for example);
– The discontinuance of “captive” imports such as Ford, Simca, & Opel. For example, I recall the Fiesta being more expensive than the larger Escort in ’81;
– The resultant price pressure it put on foreign makes from countries with stronger currencies, esp. Germany, given that nation’s inbred fear of inflation after the Weimar Republic. Now this is affecting the Euro banking crisis.
The exchange rates up until 1973 were artificially controlled under the 1945 Bretton-Woods agreement. The US wanted to help the western European countries recover and this was greatly aided by exchange rates that were very favourable to them. On the other hand, this also helped US exporters as US products were much cheaper than in Europe. It had nothing to do with Germany’s intentionally engineered 1923 “Inflation Crisis.” By 1971, Europe and Japan were firing very well economically, so Bretton-Woods was no long necessary. It was time for currencies to find their values.
The term “debasement” is complete rot from blow-hard morons like Beck and Limbaugh. It’s amazing anyone believes these blithering demagogues.
Bretton Woods was am interesting era where other currencies were convertible to the dollar at fixed rates, and the dollar was convertible to gold at $35/oz. The system actually fell apart because the US had been pursuing inflationary policies (lowering of the value of the dollar) with some gusto in the mid 1960s, which by 1971 led to a run on gold. The Nixon administration decoupled the dollar from gold, and then the U.S. really started inflating. By the mid 1970s, foreign goods were becoming really expensive in dollars, which hit European car sales quite hard. GM started selling Isuzus under the Opel brand and VW made plans to start building cars in the U.S.
Just to disprove the then-conventional wisdom that inflation was the key to prosperity, the economy went into a nasty recession in 1974-75, which flummoxed Keynsian economists to no end, as inflation and recession were thought to be tradeoffs along the Phillips curve, and not something that you could have at the same time. The Arthur Burns Fed was a disaster. Nixon appointed him in 1970 (and is reputed to have pressured him into an easy-money policy to ease Nixon’s 1972 re-election), but Carter got all the blame because the worst of the inflation didn’t really show up until later in his term.
By 1980 (when Paul Voelker, a Carter appointee as Fed Chairman, started clamping down on inflation) U. S. commercial paper rates were north of 20% and home mortages were in the mid teens. By 1985 my first new car loan was at 12%, which I thought was quite good and in 1987 my first mortgage was 8.5%. The strong dollar that resulted from the Voelker Fed coupled with the Reagan administration policies made foreign cars much less expensive relative to those build domestically, leading to pressure on congress and the voluntary import restrictions in attempt to forestall government action. The Japanese seem to have been harmed less by a low dollar and helped more by a strong dollar in these years because they seem to have been lower-cost producers than the European manufacturers. 1978-82 was a fascinating time to be an econ major in college.
The only problem with floating currencies is that governments that control the money inevitably succumb to political pressures to play games with currency value in some stupid attempt to game the system for their own country’s benefit, which always results in unintended consequences down the road that affect ordinary people. Such as headwinds for U. S. foreign car sales in the 70s and headwinds for domestic car sales in the 80s. Which is the reason for this lengthy comment (rather than the political angle, which I should take up at Curbside Economics, should I ever decide to start it. 🙂 )
Excellent summary. I grew up with the inviolable mantra of 24 Austrian Schillings and 4 DMarks to the dollar. When I spent the summer of 1969 in Austria, my spending money went really far; everything seemed so cheap. When I came back in the 1980s, it was a very different ball game. 🙁
It makes the very high dollar prices of Mercedes in the fifties and sixties look even loftier, considering the exchange ratio then. I suspect Daimler was really coining it on US sales in that era.
US monety was once cheap 7 dollars to 1 NZ pound during WW2 frinstance
jp – i also studied economics in college during the early 80’s. i was getting ready to rebut your post but actually i agree with everything you wrote!
Prior to 1971 we had basically been exporting our inflation to Europe, prolonging the fantasy level of prosperity that we enjoyed (and many today still think of as ‘normal’) from 1945 to 1970. Because the dollar was the standard relative to all other currencies, we had accumulated mountains of gold in Fort Knox and much of Europe’s reserves were depleted. DeGaulle, in particular, made a huge stink about this. This was one of the more proximate reasons for decoupling the dollar from gold.
The $ was absurdly overvalued:
As example, in 1969 I spent a month in Vienna. I was able to rent a simple room in the heart of town one block off the Ringstrasse near St. Stephens Cathedral (walking distance to everything including theaters and concert halls, the University of Vienna and city hall) for just $1 (one U.S. dollar!) per day.
Good analysis and an equally good analysis of reverse imperialism.
I concur with some of that, but you took some leaps there.
The primary problem for Bretton Woods was that it never adjusted the price of gold to match corresponding inflation. When the price was fixed at $35 per ounce during FDR’s day, that was a high price for gold — in essence, the US overpaid for it in order to reduce its influence.
But by the time the late 60s had rolled around, $35 was a bargain price for gold, and there was no reason for a foreign treasury to covet dollars when America was operating a Costco-style gold operation. Bretton Woods could have continued to work for a time had the peg been adjusted periodically to reflect the real exchange rate.
In the 70s, we also saw the introduction of commodity-driven inflation. Typically, inflation is driven by wage growth, but OPEC changed everything. Nixon then made it worse with the wage and price control programs, which merely created pent-up inflation that could hit the public once they were discontinued.
The moral of the story is that currency pegs are very difficult to manage, and usually end badly. Argentina provides a classic example of what goes wrong when a poorly managed currency peg finally unwinds.
The Japanese did get slammed by the low value of the dollar relative to the yen that started in the late ’80s and continued into the ’90s, though. That was a major reason that the Japanese sports coupes pretty much priced themselves out of the U.S. market in the ’90s.
Canucknucklehead, you made an impolite insinuation. I never said whether the debasement was purposeful; I consider it a consequence of popular gov’t policies.
$ value relative to the DM over the years; calling it debasement or not changes nothing:
http://www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/projects/currency.htm
And so? Currencies fluctuate all the time. “Debasement” is a loaded term used by the right-wing loons. The correct term to describe a lower currency value vis-a-vis another is “devaluation.”
The US dollar has no value against the DM as it doesn’t exist.
It is indeed ironic that you would choose Germany as your base point. Germany is, for American right wingers, a cesspit of socialism. How in god’s name could a “socialist” country like Germany, a place with universal health care, free university, excellent unemployment benefits and pensions, six weeks’ vacation, a 35 hour work week, unions on company boards, profit sharing a world-class trades training system and VERY high taxes, have a stronger currency than the USA???? IMPOSSIBLE! THEY ARE SOCIALISTS!!
Dark forces must be at work here…there must be a conspiracy.
canucknucklehead – devaluation or debasement, either way neil is essentially correct. the expansion of the money supply during the vietnam war is what forced nixon to go off the gold standard. after that, pent up inflation exploded until volcker slammed on the brakes with high interest rates.
But it was OK because his wage and price controls made it all better. 🙂
Canuckstan, I wasn’t referring to the post-Deutschemark era in my original post, so your accusing me of Anachronism is irrelevant. The damage was already done by the time of the Euro.
Nor am I interested in your sarcastic political rant, which I THOUGHT violated forum policies here. If you don’t like my theory as to why the $ lost value, that’s OK, no offense. I assumed it was uncontroversial.
Len, lighten up. This is not the place.
And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming:
Test drive a new 1979 Coupe de Ville today!
It was natural that the D-mark would increase in value once the Germans had dug themselves out from the rubble. It is the norm for a nation’s currency to appreciate in value when it transitions from being bombed out to a prosperous export-driven economy.
Back in the late 80’s we were vacationing in the Caribbean….St Barts to be exact and I’m sure I saw a Fox pick-up truck variation. Could be wrong but I remember thinking how cool it was…..We’re a VW family so you tend to remember those things. 🙂
You mean like this? The VW Saveiro.
Thats what I saw, Thank you
Strategically photographed not to show the massive suspension turrets intruding into the load space.
:o)
A friend of mine had one just like this example: A red two-door wagon with a 4-speed. He bought it because it was cheap, and boy was it ever cheap.
I was driving a base-model Mazda 323 at the time, and my Mazda seemed downright plush by comparison. VWs always had too much road noise and too hard a ride for my tastes, and and this car had road noise and hard ride in spades. Pete’s not a car guy, and he did nothing to take care of the car. The back seat littered with McDonald’s wrappers and empty styrofoam cups detracted from what little charm this Scheißbox had.
The anit-American manufacturing snobbery you point out is alive and well today. I’ve heard more than one new VW buyer talk about how they won’t buy a Passat because it’s made in Tennessee, not to mention lots of complaints about the VWs we get from Puebla.
It’s always struck me as odd, as VW design is what you’re buying…assembly point and country of origin are minor details compared to the engineering that goes into the car itself.
That may be, but VW doesn’t help matters by crowing about the Power of German Engineering. I’m getting sick of this last vestige of nationalism, a bad habit I thought Europeans abandoned after two World Wars.
In addition, anyone briefed on German industry is usually told how much better their worker training is compared to ours & Britain’s, so the prejudice about origin may actually have some ground.
Now I had to get over my prejudice against non-Japanese Hondas & Toyotas. But at least they don’t boast about the Power of Japanese Engineering, which however, they have every right to do in theory.
A very good point…you can’t brag about German engineering without programming some people to think vehicles made in Germany are better.
Still, engineering and assembly are completely different. That’s why automakers can build perfectly good automobiles just about anywhere they want to…
I for one loved driving my Uncle’s 4speed Fox, story here which also contains some other VW references for VW week:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coup-cars-of-uncle-peter/
He told me the reason he bought the Fox was because the advertised price was the actual price, there was no dealer prep, freight, etc etc on top of it. The only trouble he’d had was that the rear drums wore out and had to be replaced under warranty, but the shoes were still fine.
If memory serves, this was the last 2-door wagon sold in the U.S.
I never could understand why anyone would want a wagon with only 2 side doors. Hatchback – yes (I had 2 Mark I Rabbits so equipped), wagon – no.
My 1980 base Volvo 240 2-door had only a 4-speed manual (no overdrive 5th).
Out on a limb here, but wasn’t the Geo Storm/Isuzu Impulse sold in 2-door square back style in the early/mid-90s.
Oh, man! The Geo Storm Wagonback! I had forgotten all about this. Sort of debatable whether it was a real wagon or not. I wonder if any of them are still out there. CC material for sure.
A bigger stretch would be calling the 2-door Explorer/Navajo a wagon. Those got sold all they through the 00s.
The 2 door wagons of the 70s, 80s, 90s(?) i.e. Pinto, Vega/Monza, Volvo 1800ES, VW Fox, Geo Storm – seemed so stupid back then, but now I like them all. Amazing what time and extinction will do!
oh yeah!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/0867pnp/5546842197/
You Da Man!
A 2-door wagon is still more practical than a 2-door sedan or a coupé.
I drove a new one of these once and was absolutely stunned at how solid the structure was. The design of the body (especially the upper) and engine placement made it feel much stiffer than the Fox/Dasher or Rabbit/Jetta.
A friend of mine bought one because he had a long commute so he thought it would be economical and he liked the wagon for carrying his bikes. He regretted it pretty quickly when he found out just how poor the MPG was with that 4sp and how much of a noisy rattle trap it was. He replaced it with a Taurus and was happy as could be. His MPG wasn’t that much lower and it was like riding in a luxury car after being stuck in the penalty box for a number of years. He particularly enjoyed having AC when stuck in traffic for hours per week in the summer.
The interesting thing about these is that due to the limited volume VW was able to get an exemption from OBD I requirements.
By the way, “Volk” in German has some rather nationalistic overtones, so rather than simply “People’s Car” it means something more akin to the German People’s car, or the Car of the German Nation.
I remember these when they were new as being the perfect replacement for people who would have otherwise bought a Chevette or a beater Tempo/Fairmont. They were quite popular and then I used to see them dead on the side of the road with tremendous frequency.
Nice Grand National.
i must admit, i am a great fan of these cars. they were to my mind a roomier and simpler variant on the golf. i liked the way they looked better, too.
We had two of these back in the early 90’s, both bought lightly used. An ’88 GL wagon and an ’88 GL 4dr sedan. Both were absolutely reliable and great fun to drive for the 3 years we owned them. The torquey 1.8 was well matched to the long gearing of the 4 speed manual. The driving position was perfect for a long-legged driver, unlike most competing small cars in its day. The short shift lever fell perfectly to hand. Interior finishing was like a mini-Audi of the day.
The wagons have a cult following now and I’d love to have mine back. Of course there are lots of cars from my past that I wish i still had.
Does that VW belong to someone working at Midas? It looks like a Midas.
To tell you the truth, I was so shocked and mesmerized at sighting a VW Fox that I never paid attention to the location. The car was parked outside of an auto service place after hours, and while I know exactly where it is, I cannot even now tell you if it’s a Midas or some other chain.
I had a chance to buy a nice 1993 with only 45,000 miles on it back in 2001 from a Mom and Pop car sales place but went with a pristine 1989 Buick Century. The Fox was a red 4 door sedan with the optional 5 spd trans(I think in 93 the 4 spd manual trans was standard?)
I do regret that I did not buy the Fox(not that the Buick was a bad car because it was a dependable daily driver I had for 6 years and then sold it to a family friend who is driving it today(7 years later) but that Fox would have been fun to own
For some reason I don’t understand, Brazilians preferred 2 door cars back then (perhaps taxation?). The brazilian Chevette, for example, was very popular as 2-door sedan, and the 4-door version was produced almost only for export. The wagon version, called Marajo, was only available as 3-door. And the much bigger Opala wagon, called Caravan, was also only availabe with 3 doors. Back to VW, the predecesor of the Gol (or better the Parati/Fox wagon), the Brasilia, was also a 2-door wagon. Only a few 4-door models were produced, mostly for export and taxi fleets. More examples of the 3-door-wagon-mania of Brazilian-made cars are the Ford Corcel/Del Rey, Fiat Panorama and the VW Variant II.
Brazilians used to prefer 2-door cars because they didn’t look like a taxi or a police car, and also because there would be fewer door hinges to eventually fail while driving around bad roads. Basically it was still some influence from the VW Beetle…
We had an ’88 4 door until it died about 12 or 13 years ago. It was a great little car around town, decent handling, tight body structure, good firm ride, and decent pep (for it’s time). I remember it would easily roast the little 13″ tires at will. It was a terrible highway car especially with the 4 speed. For a car that seemed so peppy at lower speeds, it really ran out of steam at high speed. It was noisy and unpleasant on the highway. The interior was really cheap, lots of hard plastics and not overly durable but the front seats were comfortable. I do remember the doors being nice and solid, tight hinges and latches right until it went to the junk yard. We replaced the cylinder head later in it’s life. At about 125K miles the bottom end of the engine went out suddenly. It was towed to the scrap yard that week (the body was getting rough by then and it wasn’t worth fixing).
When I was in about fifth grade, a friend’s dad had one of these, a four-door sedan in steel blue. They were a real VW family too, as his mom had a matching steel blue 2nd gen Jetta. Ironically, I later attended a college literature class that Nick’s dad taught! He may have still had the Fox then (circa 1998-99), but I’m not sure.
We had a grey wagon; first new car I ever bought, last VW anybody in my (formerly VW-loving) family ever bought. Fun car to drive when it was on the road. We owned it for 26 months, and it was in the shop for repairs 28 times.
Boy did we use the 2-year warranty: complete cooling system, fuel delivery system, most of the electrical system, and on and on. The dealer was great, a loaner every time (including the time it was in the shop for a week, and a nice Jetta with heated seats while it was in the shop for a month in the winter), but VW Canada was no help at all. The regional service manager yelled at me (!), “It’s an entry-level car, what do you expect?”
Useful, cheapish on gas, handled pretty well, but it just didn’t work.
That’s strange because VW’s are some of the most reliable and best built cars made.
Wow, the memories. I bought a white 2 door, tan tweed interior, paid $400 around 2005 for it. Noisy engine, sounded more like a tractor engine than a proper car engine. I had to keep tools IN the car because it woudn’t go into reverse unless I loosened a couple of bolts and jiggled the ball at the bottom of the gear lever…then it wouldn’t go into 2nd and 4th unless I put everything back together. The weirdest thing was that the dashtop was so close to the steering wheel that I would hit my knuckles on the dash while turning the wheel. Primitive little beast but dead simple to work on and the basic structure was very solid. I wouldn’t mind having one now as a back-up/beater car. I haven’t seen one in Cincinnati in years.
I used to have one of these, in the 2 door coupe format. Great little car, super cheap parts and easy maintenance. I bought mine for $500.00 CDN, the P/O had it rust sprayed when new and it showed. I remember the VW dealership mechanic owned 2 and swore by them….using one to tow his boat!
Incredibly awesome looking cars!! I remember seeing boatloads of these Foxses on the road when they were new. Sadly I haven’t seen one in quite a while. The only old cars I see are lots of old Hondas and Toyotas with a kazillion miles on them and still running strong. That is something American cars can’t accomplish.
My ’93 is still kicking. It’s been in the family for close to 20 years. This was the third one we owned and all proved to be tough little cars. The red ones were prone to oxidizing and the plastic pieces became brittle as the years went on, but this guy has over 250k on the clock and is still a blast to drive.
When the Fox was introduced in 1987 it had an interior that shamed the cheap Hyundais, Festivas, etc. It was very upscale. The 1.8 litre engine was torquey and smooth. The one disadvantage was there was no automatic transmission, limiting its appeal.
My brother bought an 87 GL 4 door and it was a great car. My other brother bought a 93…the last year of production. It had a 5 speed, but alas the tachometer was replaced by a big analog clock. He sold it to my sister who seven years later was driving on an expressway here in Buffalo when the hood flew off….the latch had rusted and broken away from the body. She had it replaced but was afraid to drive it. I bought it from her and used it as a winter car for 4 more years until I sold it to my brother in laws sister….All in all it lasted 12 Buffalo winters.
Despite living an area with a fair number of VWs, there never seemed to be too many Foxes on the road. Out of what few there were, the most popular model seemed to be the two-door wagon. I wonder if the wagon was priced more inexpensively to compete with cheap hatchbacks. Or if everyone who wanted a two-door wagon ran out to get a Fox.
Ca. 1987 a coworker and his wife were shopping for a new car, and the Fox was on the shortlist. I said, “I don’t know if it matters to you, but the Fox is made in Brazil, not Germany.” For whatever reason, they got a Corolla.
My parents owned an ’89 or ’90 Fox four-door when their elderly Pontiac LeMans finally died at a financially inconvenient time. They wanted a new car because my mother was putting on a lot of miles due to long commutes and her job requiring her to drive all around metro Atlanta. They bought a Fox because of its low price, decent fuel economy, and my father’s good experience with his ’84 Rabbit Diesel (proving that a few of the Westmoreland VWs were equal to or better than their German-made counterparts). Mom put something like 90k miles on it within three years but quickly tired of rowing the 4-speed manual in heavy Atlanta traffic, so it was traded for the first of several Camrys in 1992. I drove the Fox a few times, but found it cramped and underwhelming and actually preferred the Rabbit Diesel despite its leisurely acceleration.
Good friends of ours had been life long VW owners (bus, Beetle, Rabbit) until their Fox experience. It was the only VW that left them stranded, with mechanics who had no clue on how to fix the beast (small town northern BC). Not that their Saturn and Chevy experiences were any better lol. Current ride is a 2011 Subaru Forester. Not VW.
It seems so weird to me that they never tried taking bits from the 4-door sedan and 2-door wagon and tooling up a 4-door wagon.
All the variants sold here were sold in Brazil. At the time, Brazil did not understand the need for four doors at all. The four door Voyage (the name of the sedan version of the Fox in Brazil) was introduced in 1983 and withdrawn in 1985 because they couldn’t sell any. Tooling up a four door wagon when the two door wagon was already not selling well here wouldn’t have made any sense. I’m also pretty sure the four door was actually made in a different factory from the wagon. In Brazil the two door hatchback Gol was the real winner, selling over a million of them by the end of the BX chassis.
At that time it also used to be very austere even for the Brazilian market, but for the pragmatism of the Brazilians, 4 wheels, 4 seats and a VW emblem should be enough to convince one to open the wallet, there is also the lack of something equivalent in the competition: both Fiat Uno and the sedan Premio were too small and full of issues, compared to the Fiats, these VWs were as reliable as a Corolla. Escort and its sedan Verona were too expensive (they were some sort of BMW 3 for rich Brazilians) and GM was reluctant to bring the Opel Kadett E before 1989. And after that, the Kadett sedan never came, so the VW Voyage never had a direct competitor and ruled in the small sedan as GM feared that the Kadett sedan would steal buyers from its best seller J-Car.