It's Humble and True, So Love Grew and Grew! My VW Fox.

This writer has had many makes of automobile during his long tenure on Earth. Most inspired indifference; occasionally, hatred (all Fords); and even less frequently, love.
Despite their having taken a lambasting in the press over the last couple of years for falsifying their pollution figures, the manufacturer that I have returned to, time and time again, has been Volkswagen. The perhaps 6 Beetles (sedans) I have owned in Mexico rarely let me down and when they did, it was usually the owner's fault, not the maker. (VW, not God!).
When they started making the square ones, with the Golf Mk 1 - my first was a GT convertible - I graduated to this more roomy and better performing style. Since, there has been the various marks in my garage or outside on the kerb in the leaner years (most of them, lol).
The latest driver is one of the more modest VW have created, the VW Fox. A small car, but with greater height that the Polos and Golfs of the same period. This chronicler is a pretty large bloke and getting stiff in his dotage, (everywhere except where it counts!) so the extra height wa s a bonus; in fact, the reason I bought the car back in 2009 with one previous teacher owner, for just £3250 (about $4000). A pretty cheap buy with only 18,000 guaranteed miles on the clock. It had been kept like new and I never knew why she sold it in favor of a Toyota Yaris, (something to do with her name perhaps, Iris Takamoto!)
It is still cheerily parked outside my flat in the UK, it just flashed its lights at me, bless it...whoops, why is it driving away!? Oh, false alarm, it's the neighbors Peugeot, I need to go to Specsavers. Now she has just 25,000 miles of wear. Not much use and still worth about what was paid for her.
This is the ideal car for short trips; city use, and still does a decent 85 on the freeway - that's miles per hour. Mind you, that speed wouldn't suit most Brits, much less heavy-footed German and French drivers who equate entering the freeway system as being tested at the Nurburgring! You might think 80 m.p.h is a reasonable speed on British motorways, or even the better European autobahns and autostradas, etc. I'm sure the less driven North Americans would be happy with that - the USA once has a 50 m.p.h. limit that lasted for some years and was really ridiculous.

Good brakes, not a rattle or a squeak anywhere. VW, of course, with the foresight of the canny business men they aren't, took the model off the market far too early, because (I think) it was making inroads into the Polo's sales - perhaps the higher priced Golfs, too, which have a much bigger profit margin than the basic Fox - not even power windows or factory alarm!

Taking a recent trip in Germany, I was surprised that the drivers zipping past me like road rockets looked to be ordinary men and women and not Shoemaker, Vettel, Hamilton and co.
I am not au courant with current makes and models, but I noticed a ...Ferrari Titsarosa, is that it? And a Lamborghini Cuntache and a Porche Castrator doing about 300 kph went by like a streaks of light. I was in a rented Mercedes - at least they don't call their lumps of ugly metal silly names - and doing close to the ton-up (100 mph).
Apart from VW's the only other stand-out vehicles that captured the heart have been, An Alfa Spyder GT in Oz, a really sweet little sports car; a Nissan 280 Z in the USA, finally sold to a Mexican customs inspector (think what you will); my 1973 Chevvy Camero, bought in San Diego (It wasn't great, except for the burbling V-8, but I did hold the record as far as I know from Mexico City to Brownsville, Texas, of 12 hours. That was before the roads became full of trucks, wetbacks and cocaine smugglers; you can't do those times any more...even in an aeroplane!! After the waits in the airports that is).
Not that I have ever owned a really exotic steed, like a Bentley Bentareya? or a Roller (Rolls Royce Goodhead), only footballers and bank thieves (the Bankers, not the crooks) can afford the about £100,000 minimum price of a chariot, left to devalue out in the garage. In fact, I prefer small cars. The Fox has a 1.2 CC 3-cylinder engine. And it will do 95 if really pushed. Now they are all getting these well-balanced, smooth and economical units.
Twice I have tried to escape my Fox with a Audi A4 Croup and, last month, yes, I admit it, a Ford MPV or SUV - a C-Max...sounds like a tampon! Awful blingy pile of scrap metal, I hated it from day one, it's stinky diesel and lagging turbo. It was sold again after 2 weeks and I was lucky to get my money back.
What I do have the aquisitive old peepers on is a VW Golf Plus. It has the space of the Fox, but the familiar dashboard and just a bit more space and poke: I wonder if the crafty old Fox can see one of those off as well!?
Any comments defending Ford will be wiped!