The Volkswagen Fox does not get much love in collector circles, but maybe it should. This first-year two-door sedan example in ‘Raspberry’ has been sitting in a garage since the late 1990s. The listed price of $4,000 is set as a placeholder, and the seller is explicit about why this is the case. They are gauging interest from serious inquiries while they continue to assess the car’s value, and will then offer it for sale as-is. You can find it here on Craigslist out of Littleton, Colorado. Thanks go to Rocco B for the tip.
The Fox entered the American market in 1987 as an entry-level offering based on the VW BX platform, a unique architecture developed by Volkswagen do Brasil. These entry-level subcompacts were known for their unusual longitudinal engine layout. They also paired an 1.8 inline four-cylinder with a four-speed manual transmission. Rated at 81 horsepower, the same engine was shared by the base models of the Golf, Jetta, and Scirocco of that era. It is not exciting by any standard, but it is a known quantity. The seller also indicates 137,000 miles, which for this engine and era is modest, especially considering it did nothing for the past 26 years.
The photos were also taken after blowing the dust off, rather than a wash even, which is either an honest presentation or a savvy manner of managing expectations. Either way, it is encouraging considering the seller describes the interior as almost new with no apparent wear, and the tires are also said to be like new. There are some chips and dings on the doors as can be expected, but there is no body damage. A Raspberry Fox two-door is about as rare a combination as you are going to find. The seller also notes that they cannot locate another identical Fox for sale in the country as an indication of its rarity. This is plausible since production stopped in 1993, and not many people were actively preserving these back then.
The Fox never quite built up the following other late 1980s VWs did, and GTI fans tend to overlook it. There is still a small cult following among the water-cooled VW enthusiasts, but the parts can be difficult to source. The placeholder pricing is the other elephant in the room. Previous Fox sales have been all over the map, and this car’s value will depend entirely on how the seller prices it. Serious inquiries should focus on maintenance history and confirm the garage storage timeline. Interested parties should also inspect the fuse box areas, where water intrusion has been a known issue. What do you think? Does it have a future as a collector piece, or is this one destined to spend another 26 years waiting?
In the early ’90s, I drove a Fox wagon delivering parts for my local VW dealership. As a multi-Rabbit owner, I always found it interesting how different a driving experience these Foxies gave. One thing that sticks to mind was just how wicked a burnout you could squeeze out of one. Far superior to a Rabbit’s, for an equal measure of spiciness. I suspect it had to do with the longitudinal mounting of the Fox’s engine.
Many years later another one came into my life, another wagon. Great little cars. It’d be really easy to swap in a turbo diesel from a Golf or Jetta. I’d be willing to bet you could even shoehorn in the Audi I5 turbo diesel.
VW of America: Do you have anything our market might be interested in?
VW of Brazil: How about a 2-door wagon that only comes with a manual transmission?
VW of America: Close enough.
LOL, true, but I wanted one badly. Wasn’t cheap enough, though.
This one appears to German built, because of the pop out rear quarter windows. The South of the Border ones were stationary, with a rubber gasket.
@Bob C. : None of these were ever built in Germany. Maybe you’re thinking of the 2 door Jetta?
Your right nlpnt. Seems they were all built in Brazil. But, some did have movable quarter windows and some didn’t.
VWs stepchild… They were actually very good cars!! My 2 door was very reliable, especially only paying 75 bucks. Sold it for 475.
4 grand is it!
Welcome to Nicholas, didn’t see your other posts, now you’re “one of us”.
I always thought it was the Audi Fox, and never saw a VW Fox, doesn’t look too successful. Thing is, after the Bug, and the replacement Rabbit, German cars just didn’t have the zing the Asians cars had. Price was about the same, about $6-$7grand, but we all know who won out there. Only about 26,000 VW Foxes sold per year, not much more than the Audi Fox. It’s been said, rare doesn’t mean valuable.
The problem that VW had in those years was that the price after importation was too close to that of the Golf for VW’s comfort given that the Fox was supposed to be an entry level and therefore cheaper vehicle in the VW lineup and it didn’t want the lower level Fox eating in Golf sales; so the cars were heavily decontented to keep the prices low. I had one as a service vehicle for several years and while the Fox had some strengths it also had some peculiar weaknesses as well. The 4 speed had a couple of ratios in it that could charitably be called ‘wide’ and were soo wide in fact that you always found shifting a lot in heavy traffic: the 5 speed that I got from the bone yard was better in that respect and much easier to live with around town. The car also ran a little better when the exhaust system rotted out completly and needed replacement because doing That gave me an excuse to remove the exhaust system restrictor ring that was used to drop the HP rating from the 85hp that the Golf had to 81hp in the non-cat Canadian version that I drove. The plastic used in the interior parts was weird to as it was like the stuff you’d find used in a plastic car model, a little harder and more brittle than the stuff used in Golf or Jetta. The downside of that was that it would not take an impact as easily(especially in colder temperatures) and you frequently found fairly new Foxes with busted consoles, instrument panel covers, etc, like the console in the image. Another annoyance was the rev limiter built into the fuel pump relay, which cut in at about 6,200RPM or so and undercut the mild cam that I installed for a little more pep: it made its presence known just as that cam was coming on the boil(easily corrected though with a Rabbit relay from the bone yard). My Fox Did work as a service vehicle that you could put milage on but it also forced me to live with comprimises about it’s design and character that didn’t exist in my previous service car which was an 88 Golf 4 door: so the Fox was kind of a let down. Later on when the car was sold I found out that VWdoBrazil had also produced a pickup variant called the Sarveiro and I thought that it would be rather cool to import one of Those: then I remembered what it took to live with my 4 door and then I thought,”Maybe not that cool,…”
As for the one up for sale here, hard pass at that price. I took a look at various car sites and managed to find two more coupes within about ten minutes and a wagon that had been converted to diesel, which was rather interesting, but I don’t see the rarity that I suspect is driving the asking price.
I remember the 🐺 Wolfsburg edition. Sharp looking little cars, especially the 4 door sedan.
The seller is way overestimating the interest in this car. He acts like people will be beating his door down. Tires like new? LOL. They’ve been on the car 26 years.
Looking for a affordable car for my daughter, she wants a stick, $2500 max.
This should be a $1500-2k car at most.
The price to buy is just the starting point with this bare bones ride. It will need just about everything, good luck to the buyer on sourcing parts/finding a knowledgeable mechanic. $4K is way overpriced
It looks like the seller lowered the price to $1,875, so it might be worth checking out. These are great, dependable cars. My father still has his 1988 VW Gol (the hatchback version of the Fox) in Brazil.
Juliano, go back and read the complete ad. The seller has not even set a price. They state that “PRICE IS ONLY A PLACEHOLDER.”
One of the most ridiculous things I have seen in a CL ad.
My friend had one, what amazed me back then was the fact of the longitunal engine on a front wheel drive car.
Thoses are good looking car, kind of ”military” grade.
I was wondering about that. I wasn’t sure if these were RWD or FWD. Thanks for clarifying. It’s a similar engine/drive orientation to the Toronado/Eldorado. Any idea how the engine and transaxle were connected? Toro/Eldos needed the room so they folded the drivetrain back on itself and transferred engine power to the transaxle with a wide chain. I doubt that these were that complex.
It looked a lot like a standard domestic auto trans from the 60s with a flange on either side of the narrow end of the bell housing that connected to the drive shafts. They went that route instead of the east/west transaxle style in the Golf because the Fox was originally built with an air cooled flat four derived from the Beetle. VWdoBrazil wanted a new model but they had to work with whatever the parant company gave them in the way of engines, drive train, etc.
Shared design roots with the Audi 4000 and VW Dasher… power is sent straight back to the input shaft of the trans….
Injection system looks odd to me, it’s mechanical and almost right in the cylinder?
Bosch “K-Jetronic”, continuous injection system (CIS). Wonderful piece of equipment– reliable, easy to tune and diagnose, made good power. Each injector sprays (continuously, not pulsed) at the back of the intake valve.
This vintage of Fox used a Bosch K-jetronic CIS (continuous injection)… It is a mechanical system. Same (or at least similar) to what I had on my ’80 Scirocco… Later versions used CIS-E which added some level of electronic control, but its heart was still mechanical.
The wagon version of these was a wonderfully useful sub-compact… A competent driver as well… Wish there was something out there like it today…
The two Foxes I had, a 4-door GL and a wagon were excellent cars, barring the widely spaced ratios in the 4-speed and the weird over-centre feel to the steering near maximum lock. Rust and exterior door handles that broke in freezing weather were about all I had to gripe about. $4,000? He’s having a laugh. $1,200 is more like a fair price.
Only recall meeting one person who owned one. Back in the early 90s we had a cute young woman who called on our dealer selling advertising. So, a fox driving a Fox.
Trying to guess how long it’s been since those battery terminals were cleaned . . .
Looks like it got hit in the front once, left headlight looks odd and the grill is held by a piece of sheet metal.
The body above the grill also looks kind of beaten.
That’s why they don’t show the front of the car.
Trim missing on the passenger door, probably new coating after damage and never installed the trim again.
And someone peed on the passenger seat.
Re my remark above, another thing that was bad about these at least in the first two years was the quality of the paint: most of the colors but especially this shade of red would oxidize rather quickly. There was no rust or corrosion under the paint it just seemed like poor quality paint that didn’t last longer than two years or so. The later years were nowhere near as bad so I guess that VW got enough complaints about the finish to actually do something about it.
This line of Volkswagen models manufactured in Brazil (currently nicknamed “Quadrados,” or “Squares”) consisted of the Gol (hatchback), Parati (station wagon), Saveiro (pickup truck), and finally the Voyage (sedan)—a car that was exported to the U.S. under the name “Fox.”
I had a new one for my first car in 1988, it cost , $8,000. I had it until someone ran a red light in 1993.
I bought a Raspberry 4 door in 1997 for 225.00 from a thrift store. It was the GL model so had aircon, fm-am stereo, velour interior and was a ’90 model year. The Brazilian built beauty (!) had only 110,000 miles and when I drove it on it’s final journey to Tucumcari, NM after years of ownership, it had 534,000 miles on it. I gave it to the fellow I bought an older ’84 Porsche 944 from, and he continued to drive it several years further on. It never used a drop of oil during my time with it, but I did replace the 4 speed manual once at around the 250 mark. It would not shift and hold into 3 gear when I bought it (no doubt why it was donated), so it got wound out a stretch and slipped into 4th at 3500 rpm. The used tranny soldiered on without skipping a beat. Other than clear coat failure, a used alternator was the only other replaced part along with the transmission. It was one durable little FOX and the velour interior wore like iron as well. I had owned a beetle and a rabbit previously and I will say the FOX was the more economical of the group getting nearly 38 mpg highway. By the way they only came to America as manual transmission cars, no doubt why they sold so few here
Back in the day that was a garantee that the shift coupling screw in the linkage was BADLY worn:
https://www.pelicanparts.com/More_Info/443711189A.htm
The screw has a specific shape at the end to fit into an identically shaped hole in the round selector rod that came out of the transmission. The problem was that the selector rod was made of hardened steel the screw was made out of mild steel, so that every time the two would come into contact when you were shifting the shape of the screw would deform very sligtly over time. The Shape would deform more and more causing you to have to push the shifter further and further in its gate to engage the gear: when it got Really bad you couldn’t engage the gear at all.VW in town use to replace them until the warratee on the car elapsed and after that you were on your own. I found out about the issue from a sympathetic tech at VW and once I figured out what was going on I had a 13MM screw made and hardened at a local machine shop and That lasted while I had that tranny in the car. I also made a few spares that I later sold and installed to other Fox owners in the area.
While these were the cheaper counterparts of their bigger brother VWs, these cars drove surprisingly well and were good cars. I am a ‘stick’ guy so only manual transmissions were fine with me.
From the “seller”:
“FOR NOW: gauging interest from SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY from those who might be interested in restoring it. PRICE IS ONLY A PLACEHOLDER. Will put it up for sale on as is condition when we assess value and inform those who respond.”
That’s the dumbest thing I have ever read in a CL ad. At least the crap boxes that are listed with trees growing in and around them have a price tag.
The big brother of the FOX was the AUDI 4000 / 4000 QUATTRO (known in Europe as the AUDI 80) These were campaigned as Rallye cars and were almost unbeatable
An export version of the Brazilian VW Gol/Parati/Voyage as it was known over its production life.
As noted previously, it is based on a modified Audi platform, and curiously, has nothing to do with the similarly sized European VW Polo.
The initial Gol had a turned around air-cooled Beetle motor up front, which gave way to water-cooled motors to compete with Chevrolet’s wildly successful Chevette, and meet emissions standards– and Air Conditioning
I wonder what import duties/taxes VW had to pay to sell it in the USA? Brazil imposes huge tarrifs on imported cars, and a Mustang owner, is probably pretty well-healed.