Yeah we're also comparing a 20+ year old car to a brand new car. You may as well compare them to any brand new front engine/rear wheel drive car and you'd get similar results. There's more to life than refinement and cabin noise, otherwise the "classics" would just be old out dated pieces of crap and Barrett Jackson wouldn't be selling 6 figure muscle cars.
It's not the 20-year-old age of a particular car in question that puts the Fox at a major disadvantage when compared to the S197, it's the now 29-year-old age of the way out of date design itself that seals that fate. The age and condition of a particular vehicle itself is just another thing working against the value of any Fox in question, it has nothing to do with what makes one the "better car" over the other. And if you honestly think the differences between a Fox and an S197 are limited to just refinement and cabin noise, then you're running with blinders on and there's no helping you.
And the reason the "Classics" are going for 6-figures with Barrett Jackson aren't because they were the better car. It's because they were among the originators of the affordable sports coupe and muscle car era and also because of their limited production run. The nearly 900,000 Fox's that rolled off the assembly line during the course of it's run that ensures it will
never be a collectable and worth no where near what the classics were. Only the owners of these cars themselves really place any sort of value on them, and even then that's only from a nostalgic standpoint.
The rest of the world considers them cars built to bet by during the low point of the 80’s American Automobile revolution. They were built sporty and cheap using an existing parts and designs to minimize costs and increase production value. Ford certainly didn’t have high quality, a cutting edge design or a serious sports car in mind when they “threw” the Fox bodies together, nor did any of the big three Manufacturers at the time. It was honestly a fluke that the Fox took off the way it did and I’m sure nobody expected them to be as successful as they were.
I have absolutely no problem with someone loving their Fox for the nostalgic value, the familiar rough edges, the great bang for the buck performance, the inexpensive maintenance or the high availability of parts and low over all cost. I myself loved my old Fox for just those same reasons, which is why it will always hold a soft spot in my heart, but things are changing. Loving your car for all the reason I just stated is certainly warranted from a “personal preference” standpoint, but don’t let that fool you into thinking they’re in any way, shape or form superior to or even equal to the standards or performance of the newer breed, because they just aren’t!
