Jalopnik: Fox

Official Car Pundit Drinking Game: Jalopnik Editor Gets Crazy Like A Fox Over Gas Prices

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:30:00 EDT

It's been awhile since we last had a chance to hoist some drinks over a Jalopnik editor hitting the airwaves. Luckily, our intrepid associate editor in Chicago is giving us a chance to drown our sorrows over the high price of gas on the Fox Business Channel this afternoon at 1:35 EST. Matt "Holla-Holla" Hardigree will be going toe-to-toe with Stuart "Little" Varney and they'll be talking about whether luxury cars are taking as big a hit on the new sales market as SUV's. If you don't know the rules of how the game is played, head over here to check them out. If you do (or once you do, we should say) hit the jump and get to providing us some new rules for the world's only official car pundit drinking game. Then, if you happen to be in one of the plethora of media markets with FBC, turn on the boob-tube, pop open your favorite libation, and get ready to play.

1976 Audi Fox Wagon: Choice Of Discerning Pit Crew Members!

Murilee Martin — Tue, 13 May 2008 16:20:00 EDT

The cars driven by the team members and audience at the 24 Hours of LeMons race tended to be more interesting than what you'd see in your typical East Bay parking lot. I saw an AMC Hornet with a trunk-mounted computer, a small-block XJ6 with a wicked-looking hood scoop, and this very clean Fox wagon... which turned out to be owned by Shawn, a helluva good mechanic who showed up as a last-minute crew addition and proved incredibly useful in the Black Metal V8olvo pit action. That's Shawn fueling our car in the gallery below. I can't recall the last time I saw an Audi Fox in any condition, much less one this nice.

BMW 320D Touring Turns Fox Into Hamburger (Not Safe For Weak Stomach)

bwojdyla — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:30:36 EST

Imagine cruising in your brand new, 2007 BMW 320D Touring at 230 kph (~143 mph) along the pristine asphalt of the Autobahn, listening to the finest in German techno. All of a sudden from the roadside, a flash of fur streaks across the road and you feel a mild thump, accompanied by a spray of rouge across the bottom of the passenger side windscreen. All of the warning lights explode across your instrument panel. If you are the fellow who drives this particular BMW, you don't have to imagine anything, because this scenario played itself out recently and the fox who did the streaking did not live to tell his tale. Excuse our discretion, but the gallery for this one is below the fold...

We're betting that from the outside, it only looks like the bimmers' signature kidney shaped grill insert and bumper cover are damaged. Opening that hood reveals that the fox managed to plough through the grill opening, then simultaneously destroy the radiator mount, and pass through the radiator and destroy the intake system. Messy. We're betting the insurance company doesn't total this one, so we feel bad for the garage that gets the work. Hopefully they have a carnage seperator in the bottom of their work pit. If you have a weak stomach, viewing these in high resolution is less than advisable.

Capture A New Fox Mustang For Just $4342!

Murilee Martin — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:00:00 EDT

Laugh away, but putting the Mustang on the new Fox Ford platform for the '79 model year de-Pinto-ized the car and made it possible to say the words "Mustang" and "performance" in the same sentence without giggling. But I gotta be honest here, the song in this ad drove both me and Señor Johnson crazy...

So you can see the kind of brilliant repartee that takes place behind the scenes, I'm including the transcript of the painstaking research we performed, in hopes that I might include a witty reference to the song in the post about the Mustang ad above. Sadly, we're forced to deprive you of said witty reference this time around:

[00:09] Murilee Martin: Hey, I need to identify a cheezball 70s rock song I've heard a million times, but can't recall the perpetrator
[00:09] Murilee Martin: it is Steve Miller? Shit, I've heard it so goddamn many times
[00:09] Murilee Martin: Peter Frampton... no...
[00:10] Davey G: Oh shit.
[00:10] Murilee Martin: Who is it?
[00:10] Murilee Martin: Goddamn it!
[00:11] Murilee Martin: It's driving me crazy
[00:11] Davey G: God, Frampton and Miller are both good guesses.
[00:11] Murilee Martin: Come on, it's one of the all-time 70s anthems
[00:11] Davey G: Now it's driving me crazy!
[00:11] Murilee Martin: It's not "Free Ride" though it sounds similar
[00:12] Davey G: Fuck, I simply can't remember.
[00:12] Murilee Martin: Hey, I'll just copy/paste our conversation on the subject
[00:12] Murilee Martin: we can get the readers to ID it
[00:12] Davey G: Totally!

So there you go, all-knowing readers. Tell us the name and artist of the song in this ad, a song we've heard so many times its notes are permanently seared into our gray matter, so that we may recover our sanity.

Vintage Tamiya Lust, Sated

Davey G. Johnson — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 19:15:00 EDT

Somewhere around 1986, we got the bug to have a badass R/C car of our own. We scrimped. We saved. We scrounged, and we didn't buy an RC/10. Or an Optima. Somehow, we believed that the Tamiya Fox was obviously the coolest R/C money could buy, thus dooming us to a life of fetishizing Citroëns and Mantas. Regardless, that car frankly was pretty awesome to an eleven-year-old boy; we spent plenty of hours terrorizing motorists and wayward dogs with the torquey little buggy, which eventually ended up with a candy-apple red '67 GTO body, thus pre-dating our eight years of GM A-Body ownership by um, three years or so. Steve Finkbuilt has a slightly older fantasy — that of Tamiya's Sand Scorcher Baja Bug. And given that the car is from the company's pre-ABS-plastic era, it goes for far too much money for an econo tinkerer like himself. So, naturally, he built his own, using a venerable Grasshopper chassis as the basis. [Finkbuilt]

General Motors Joins Chocolate Eggs In Advertising On NBC-Fox's NewTube

Ray Wert — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:30:00 EDT

Congrats to the General on helping to put up the ducats necessary to pay for NBC/Fox's new GooTube competitor. That's right, GM's going to be one of the first advertisers on the new online video collaboration between the fair and balanced Fox and the peacocks at NBC. And we're glad to see it, because we think the world needs more boldly moving automakers willing to agree to buy advertising on a platform that doesn't yet exist, and will probably quickly become filled with videos of cats playing piano, ninjas and you know, other randomness. We also like that Cadberry's buying advertising on it as well, because we like the chocolate eggs and stuff. – Ray Wert

Everyone and Their Mother Teams Up to Form GooTube Competitor [Gizmodo]
Google's tactical error [Valleywag]
NBC, News Corp Team Up to Build Video Website [CNBC.com]

VW Loopy Over Lupo In 2011?

Ray Wert — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 07:45:00 EDT

Yeah, we don't know German so much, so there's not much more we can tell you other than that AutoBild's got what they're claiming is a rendering of a new version of the V-Dub Lupo. The Lupo's the two-door "city car" killed by the automaker representing Deutschland back in 2005 in favor of the VW Fox. AutoBild's claiming this new Lupo will be representing starting in 2011. Anyone have a German-English dictionary we can borrow? – Ray Wert

AUTO BILD-Vorschau Kleinwagen Die feinen Kleinen [AutoBild.de]

VW Representing Intelligence, Not Playing Dumb on Smart Car Rival

Ray Wert — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 15:50:00 EST

Martin Winterkorn, the new boss at Volkswagen, told the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung that he had proposed the "design and development of a new, very small, model below the Fox." According to a translation from the folks at Car und Driver, the car will be an "economical, everyday small car that looks attractive and is affordable" and will have "space for four people plus luggage," unlike the DCX Smart it will compete with. Keep in mind...

...this comes right after VW solidified plans for its diesel sipping BlueMotion Polo (which can drive from Britain to the south coast of France on one tank). Maybe it's a pipe dream, but with the probable high cost of importing this sub-Fox auto wouldn't it be easier to justify the expense by mating it to an uber-efficient BlueMotion diesel? We're just saying. – Matt Hardigree

VW Plans New Compact Car - Daily Auto Insider [Car and Driver]

Spy Photos: Volkswagen Fox MPV

Mike Spinelli — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 08:38:05 EST

The German Car Blog procured some shots, reportedly from a Brazilian magazine, that shows a new VW Fox MPV for Brazil. The MPV will debut along with the rest of the facelifted Fox lineup. Sure, it could be a photoshopped Skoda, with a Passat rear-end grafted on, but there's something that makes us think a VW similar to this could wind up in the US market in the next couple of years. Call it intuition.

VW Fox MPV: Spy shots! [The German Car Blog]

Related:
Toyota Launches Ractis MPV in Japan [internal]

Twenty, Twenty, Twenty-Four Hours to Go: I Wanna Drive a Toyota

Davey G. Johnson — Mon, 05 Dec 2005 21:56:20 EST

Fox has decided to broaden the Ford-centric product-placement universe of 24 and toss some Toyota in the mix. In the fifth-season "bridge" mini-movie that comes with the DVD set of season four, Kiefer Sutherland will run from or be running down baddies in an Avalon. Which we guess is sort of like a modern-day Steve McGarrett-mobile, but not nearly as badass as the top Five-Oh cop's Merc. Jeez...remember when Mercuries could be considered certifiably appropriate rides for badasses on either side of the law? Wha' happen?

Toyota Vehicles to Be Integrated into Fox's '24' [AdAge]