UK-POLOS.NET - THE VW Polo Forum

It's taller than the polo!!!



I was somewhat surprised:



Deek.

Its always looked bigger in the spy shots and photochops too. Perhaps for practicality's sake? The shot from the rear really emphasises the height difference!

still like the polo better

how much longer is the polo?

yeah but the arches are hooooge on the fox.

They do look a siilar size, are they based on the same platform??

Petrified wrote:
They do look a siilar size, are they based on the same platform??

yes

VW Brasil claims the Fox was designed "around the passengers" - that is, supposedly from inside out. Maybe VW used some tall people as models and started drawing around them.

It's a bit of a mini-MPV, really. The Fox is meant to be a cross between city car and family car for cash-strapped Brazilians, not a small "VW/lifestyle" citycar for urban Europeans long on cash and short on parking space.

(Though I've got to admit we don't have parking space either)

So it's got to be big enough for Mr. da Silva, his wife and his 1.7 kids (average number of kids for Brazilian families). It also needed lots of oddments' spaces, harsh plastics to keep the car cheap, a flex-fuel engine that runs on either petrol or alcohol or any mixture of the two (to comply with tax-break legislation).

Added for European consumption are the safety features, unpainted (black) front spoiler and little plastic full for the boot door.

Platform is a simplified 9N's - they've removed the centralized, multiplexed electrical systems in favour of several simpler electronic modules. Or so we were told at the 2003 launch.

It's ridiculous that they've decided to sell only the 3-door in Europe when the car has obviously been conceived with 5 from the beginning - the design works much better as a 5 door MPV-ish thing.

Still, it'll be interesting to see how a car designed by Brazilians to replace the Gol will do in Europe.

I kinda like the Fox, in a "generic" way. I do really feel it was designed around its (Brazilian) passengers. If I were one of them, though, VW would've ended up with another Polo.

Seems odd.. I would have thought that in it's non- 5 door mini MPV version, the fox would be pretty much direct competition for the polo. VW have a hatchback for just about all circumstances already, seems madness having yet another.

VW has 3 small hatchback lines in Brazil, the ageing Gol, the Fox and the Polo, and even though polo sales have fallen since the Fox entered the market, each car has its own set of buyers, the Gol and the Polo sitting at the extremities with the Fox trying to please both crowds.

The price difference between the Gol and the Fox is very small, but you'd have to spend about £1000 more to jump from the Fox to the Polo.

The Gol is cheaper, rougher and aimed at die-hard "old Volkswagen" fans - they're not exactly fans of outdated technology, but rather they prefer VW as it used to be, before it became an "aspirational" brand. Polo buyers, on the other hand, want a more sophiscated product and don't mind paying what are now compact-class prices for the privilege. Golf prices have gone through the roof for the average Brazilian and it's become a sort of a fetish car these days.

With the Fox, VW aimed for broader appeal - it's not as "un-VW" as the Polo, and it's not as much of a "Beetle replacement" as the Gol.

It's selling well, the Fox, but it's nowhere near the Gol.

I think in Europe VW decided to reduce the risk of the Fox "cannibalizing" the Polo by only offering it as a 3-door. And as I said, the Fox addresses rather different priorities than those of the average European buyer.

It's a bit like what happens at Renault, th Fox being a "Logan" to VW's "Clio", really.

Keep in mind the Fox was designed by Brazilians, with places like Brazil and Mexico in mind. The Lupo was never sold here because it'd have been too expensive for what it was; the Fox is no Lupo replacement IMHO.

It'll be interesting to see how the European press and consumers react to a car designed for a completely different market and reality.

just what IS the length difference between the Fox and the Polo, then? 5 doors on a Polo is about the lower size limit for such a feature (can you imagine a 5 door Lupo?) so it can't be so much shorter?

If you notice, the Fox is a bit narrower, too... hmm

Ruthless, is the Gol still being sold with an aircooled engine?

The Fox is 60mm taller than the Polo and about 80mm shorter, according to VW (1.54m tall and 3.804m long).

The Gol hasn't been sold with an aircooled engine since model-year 1984... Its has several versions of an Audi-sourced line of 1.6 and 1.8-litre engines from the mid-1980s til about 1996, when it received some newly-designed VW engines with multi-valve heads (including the ultra-smooth 1-litre 16V with 76 bhp, which developed 80bhp when mounted in the Polo. The Fox uses an 8-valve version of that engine that's good for 71bhp).

ah, but that's only when it's running on alcohol isn't it? remember seeing about that.... would still like to give it a try in a euro spec car.

after all, if you ignore the almost obligately evil torque curve such tuning would produce*, that's about as much power as my new 1.6 gives

3.8m, still not a proper "mini" car then (<3.60m, or 3.40 in tokyo... Lupo was 3.50m**)... wonder if it'll have any trouble finding a market niche over here?


* only an assumption.. they might have worked wonders and got a good 80 or 90lbft / 110-120Nm out of it, but i doubt that somehow!

** The original Austin Mini was, unbelievably, only 3.05m... still shorter than the vast majority of "mini" cars on sale. The "tiny" Smart is 2.5m itself!

Hmmm. Just spotted some other differences between the "Americas" version of the Fox and the Euro version (apart from slightly different front bumpers and the plastic thingy to pull the boot door).

Interior: the European Fox receives a Polo steering wheel, a double-din radio slot, different heating/a-c controls (in order to accomodate the 2DIN radio they had to be made smaller). Oh, and a proper, lidded glovebox instead of the big open "space" in the facia:




European car




Brazilian car



Heating/AC controls in the Brazilian Fox. Below, a CD box that appears to have been deleted in the European version.


By using the Polo steering wheel the European Fox also loses the steering-wheel-mounted radio controls that come with the airbag'ed Brazilian-market car.

@Tahrey:

Figures are 70bhp for petrol only and 71bhp for alcohol. Most people use a mixture of the two, since alcohol gives more power/torque but increases fuel consumption by 20% (although it is usually 22-25% cheaper than petrol).

The Fox is flex-fuel, meaning it can use any mixture of the two fuels. In the 1980s, when 90% of new cars in Brazil used alcohol, the engines could only run on alcohol. An alcohol-powered 1.6 Gol from the 1980s developed 90bhp (with a carburettor!) while the petrol version of that same engine only managed 81.

why does no-one do a proper dash scuttle tray any more

I really miss being able just to chuck stuff into the one on the mk3 and being able to rely on them still being there at the end of the drive

the edge lips on all modern ones are far too small, unless you drive everywhere like you've got an unsecured basket of eggs on the roof things fly around

The mk3 was a one off.. even with a non slip mat on mine anything that goes on top of the dash is in my passenger's lap within 15 seconds..

Is there any reason that alcohol isn't available as a fuel over here? Sounds like a pretty viable alternative to petrol really, and if it increases power then I'm suprised it isn't in high demand...