QOTD: Can You Build an Ideal Crapwagon Garage? (Part IV: Wagons)

So far in the Crapwagon Garage QOTD series, we’ve covered hatchbacks, sedans, and pickup trucks. For the fourth installment in the series, we take the best qualities of all three of those previous vehicles.

What do you get when you affix a hatchback to a sedan, and add the covered rear bed area from a truck? A wagon, of course.

Your suggestions last week mostly agreed with my T100 and GMT400 examples, but some responses did stray from the beaten path a bit. The Why Couldn’t I Think Of This award goes to:

…MoparRocker74’s suggestion, the GMC Caballero. Not as common as the El Camino, and the hood ornament and various special editions add to my interest. The one pictured is a Diablo edition, and I’ve no idea what that entails. But it’s odd and I like it — nice work.

Let’s have a little reminder of the rules of the Crapwagon Garage game:

1. A crapwagon must be a vehicle which is relatively easy to find and purchase using an internet.
2. All vehicles in the crapwagon garage must have been sold as new, in the North American market.
3. Said vehicles must be obtainable to the casual crapwagon collector (CCC). This means in clean, running condition each one asks $7,000 or less on a normal day.
4. Your suggestions must fit into the vehicle category of the week. If you don’t like the category, that’s tough. We’ll get to a category you like eventually.
5. There are five rules to this garage game, and that’s the maximum number of vehicles you may submit for each section. Just five.

Some of you were about to breach rule number three last time around, specifying things like “probably not clean for this money.” Watch out. Time for my wagon selections.

First up, the final Nissan Maxima wagon North America received. The one pictured is an ’86, and asked just $3,700 not long ago via Craigslist. I love the shape, the luxury, and the two-tone brown nature. This Maxima is from a time before Infiniti; Maxima carried the luxury sedan/wagon designation on this continent by itself. These pop up from time to time online, in excellent condition, and cheap.

I’ll probably catch some flack for this one, but I’ve always liked the 1990s E-Class wagon. It has an element of dignity and restraint which is absent from any modern Mercedes-Benz offering. The 1995 pictured paired navy blue paint with peanut butter leather (or perhaps M-B Tex), but other lovely ’90s colors were also available. Manual transmissions were an option, as well as the 4Matic all-wheel-drive system. They’re always in great shape when you find them for sale, as the typical E-Class wagon owner is well-heeled.

Off to you B&B. Let’s see how hard it is for you to pick only five wagons for your Crapwagon Garage.

[Images: Lexus, GM, seller]