The newer Fox was the same thing, the only difference was they gave it a minor facelift which was essentially just the flush mounted headlamps, and they went from CIS (K/KE-jet) to Digifant (VAG's watered down Motronic) and made the 5sp standard (early cars were 4sp, with the "GL5" having the optional 5th gear).
I knew those cars all too well. I owned a few, tried to buy the final two '93s remaining at our dealer in '95, dust and flat tires and all. They would not take a cash deal. They were MSRP'd at $10,500, I offered them $16k for both. Cash. They refused. Went to a different dealer and bought a new '95 Golf GL instead. Mostly out of spite.
Those same two '93 Foxes sat there at least another year, in the back of the lot, one had a window smashed. No idea what ended up happening to them. Sad, they were brand new unsold cars.
The Fox was an outdated design really even in '87 when they came out. The only thing they had going for them over similar priced cars was a bigger, better engine, and they were fuel injected. Stripper Sentras had TBI, though, and the base 323 was EFI. But the Tercel had an awful VV carb, the base Civic still had a carb, and the rest of anything in that price range was a royal piece of junk. The Fox did have the unique 2dr wagon version though, akin to similar models from earlier times from Volkswagen as well as Ford and GM. I had an '89 4dr sedan and an '88 2dr sedan. The wagon version was dropped before the facelift, though.
We did a lot of heater core recalls on them, and it seemed like the only people that bought them were the cheapest of the cheap people and they were rarely cared for properly. They were also a bit of an odd duck in that no automatic transmission option was available, and the manuals they used (both the 4 and 5) were notoriously fragile. Pretty sure they were just revamped old B1 Passat (Dasher here) gearboxes that were never really designed to handle the output of the 1.8L engine (even in its detuned form in a smaller lighter car). We had lots of relatively low mileage cars with broken transmissions towed in, which of course totaled the car. It was sort of a running contest to see who had the biggest tow in crap pile: broken Foxes, broken 096/01M cars, Suzuki [any model] with a rod hole in the block, or any number of burnt to a crisp Nissan models (fuel leaks). VW/Nissan/Suzuki dealer.
