Clean foxes are expensive, but they're also worth it. Just to put this in perspective, I bought a car I used to own (
Black Jack) back from the guy I sold it to for a song, an absolute steal, at $3,800. It ran and drove nicely, and aside from a badly mangled sound system installation/removal he did that caused a lot of electrical problems, it just needed fluids. But, I decided to go through everything and make it much nicer to daily. I didn't want $20k+ cars like my other two foxes. In fact, my biggest expense to date has been a pair of $600 TMI door panels that are lovely. Now, I've got ~$9,300 in the car altogether. The only work I paid for was welding in my exhaust pipes, and collectively there's a couple hundred hours of work in it. It's come an amazingly long way, but I've mainly only made the car more reliable and the interior's a nice place to hang out. That's how important buying a clean car is! You might think you can just fix it up and make it nice for cheap, but unless you have a junkyard full of foxes next door, or you're dedicated to finding cheap parts on the marketplace over the next century, it's not going to be cheap to make a rough car into a nice one.
Mine already had a nice GT40X/E-cam/GT-40 intake combo, so I didn't need to make it a performance project. It fits what I want in a daily driver Fox and I had the benefit of knowing the aftermarket parts were in good order when I sold the car to him in 2017. Aftermarket parts usually hurt the value and they scare buyers away. BTW, I sincerely doubt you will find a Black Jack (mine) out there with a nice H/C/I without drivetrain problems for $3.8k. I still can't believe I got it back from him for that. But the point is... after making it nice, I know it wasn't worth it from a utilitarian standpoint. I'd have been better off buying a $10-$15k car that was lower mileage & cleaner in the first place. I don't regret it, because I love this car, and my story with it! But, you should go for a clean one and you should pay good money for it, if you can afford to.
So, in today's market, it seems like you have a choice: 1) buy a cheap, ratty car to beat on/drive around and don't fix it up beyond what's necessary to keep it going, 2) buy an expensive, clean car that doesn't need work, or 3) buy a cheap ratty car that you make expensive anyways and still don't have what you could've bought for the same amount of money in the first place. Pick your poison. So, if you don't like this particular notch that you're looking at, foxes are still all over the marketplace and you'll find another. My advice is to pay good money for a top-notch Fox that's built fairly close to what you want. If you take care of it, you'll get most of your money or more than what you paid back out at the end. If you never sell, then you'll appreciate having the beautiful car.
It had a cobbled-together 302 that ran (I stuffed it in there so I could move it under it own...).
