In a hobby filled with high-powered muscle cars, precision-handling sports cars, and fantastically styled exotic cars, it might seem strange to heap praise on the lowly station wagon. But hang around car people long enough and you’ll come to appreciate the mighty wagon and the special type of enthusiasts who drive them.
To be clear, when I say station wagon, I’m talking about a very specific vehicle type. A sedan-based car with a long roof enclosing a functional, enclosed utility area in place of a conventional trunk. Truck-based utility vehicles like Suburbans are close relatives, but they’re a different branch of the family tree altogether. And most of today’s lifted hatchback-based crossovers are from a different clan entirely.
The station wagon emerged as a solution to a genuine need, with origins predating the automobile itself. The earliest ones were horse-drawn wagons used by hotels to pick up and drop off train passengers at the station. Hence, the station wagon. It was only natural that its essential form – comfortable seating accommodations for several passengers combined with ample space for their luggage and other personal belongings – would eventually be adapted to motorcars in the early 20th century.
The earliest examples were coach-built conversions of sedans and trucks, the wagon back-end often crafted from wood (aka – the woody wagon). But the strong post-WWII economy and its booming population made factory-built station wagons popular in America from the 1950s through the early ‘70s. Eisenhower’s 1956 signing of the Federal Aid Highway Act kicked things in high gear. A whole generation of families routinely packed up their station wagons to explore the vastness of the American landscape. Never mind the wood paneling was now fake.
The station wagon boom was hardly exclusive to America. As other countries’ economies recovered in the post-war years, their own automakers saw value in more spacious family cars. European families, who often owned just one vehicle, saw wagons as a smart choice for all-around use in the 1970s. Taking up no more space than a comparable sedan, the wagon offered maximum utility in Europe’s more compact settings.
But as the masses took the station wagon at face value, certain enthusiasts saw value in its wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing appearance. It wasn’t long before muscle-car drivetrains started finding their way under the hoods of those wood-clad workaday wonders. Sleeper cars had been around at least since the moonshine runners of the Prohibition Era, but the advent of the power wagon took the game to a whole new level.
It’s easy to find favor with the crowd by driving a Z/28 or Mustang GT 350. But it takes a different kind of swagger to roll into a cruise night in a Vista Cruiser. Whether it’s hot rodded or not, showing up in an American station wagon always makes you a bit of a lone wolf. Not everyone is cut out for it, and that’s the point in the first place.
In import circles, however, station wagons are often treated with a higher degree of respect. They’re far rarer, for one thing, at least stateside. And in many cases, they’re considerably more prestigious than their sedan counterparts, especially those from Germany’s top carmakers. Hell, Volvo took their wagons to the racetrack and cleaned house. What they lacked in square acreage compared to their Yank Tank counterparts they made up for with luxurious accommodations and athletic performance.
The ’80 and ‘90s s saw minivans take over as the predominant form of family travel, followed by SUVs for the next couple decades. Today there are but a handful of true wagons still for sale on dealer lots, supplanted by crossover utilities. Like Route 66 and so many other institutions of American motoring, the glory days of the station wagon are all but a memory.
But for some of us, those days never ended. Whether you appreciate their everyday practicality, their unbeatable utility, or their stealth personality, station wagons are and always will be the ultimate underdog car. And that’s alright by me.
I still own and love my 1959 Rambler Cross Country Station Wagon after 52 years. It is red and white similar to the 1960 in that photo.
Funny you should show a 1960 Rambler Cross Country Wagon. Ours was Blue, with White top and those huge tailights and we looked sooo patriotic. In-line 6 with the push button automatic, we traveled from Socal to Connecticut when you could sleep in the back (the seats folded flat and made an area big enough for my 2 sisters and me) and of course, no seat belts while back there. My dad put ones in while we were seated.
Going across the desert, we had the canvas “desert cooler” bag hanging in front of the radiator, and wing-windows blasting us with hot air. We usually tried to hit it early, find shade in midday and then well past dark. I was 5, and my sisters 4 and 3!
Then next trip was in a self-converted 65 Econoline Super Van, fully synced 3 on the tree, 240 in-line six and dealer installed air…. of course, you could not run it if too hot. Went to Expo 67 in Montreal, down the Eastern Seaboard and back…. 9000 miles with the five of us.
The ol’ Rambler was sold to a neighbor kid in 1972 for $60 after my mom got used to the Chevy Kingswood Wagon with the 402 V-8, but still cranky windows… but ice-cold air…. weird 3rd row seats though, and tailgate slid under the back, window into the roof.
I still own the Supervan…. 317k miles and nearly all original paint…. my dad sold it to me for a dollar with 148k miles saying “I don’t know how long it will last you” that was 1976.