How do you make a wagon cool? Call it a five door hatch. I have a wagon mafia sticker on the back of my Mazdaspeed3, and at all the Mazda meets I go to, people are like…its not a wagon, its a five door hatch.

A wagon as four doors and a hatch. My car has four doors and a hatch. Whats the difference? Marketing. Embrace the wagonhood, my fellow wagon owners! I don’t need a trailer for my track wheels at the end of a track day, I just toss them in the back!”

IMHO, a hatchback is a wagon with a significantly smaller rear area. For example, I own a Scion xA. Without the rear seats folded down, the hatch area is rather small. I wouldn’t call it a wagon, but if it had a foot or three more space in the rear, it would be. (I personally don’t need the space and like having a small car for ease of parking and general “dodgability”.)

The Bradsher book is phenomenal. Anyone wondering about the existence of SUVs needs to read about the profits generated by the Expedition alone in one plant. It also goes a loong way towards explaining the Big Three shift into trucks. Sadly it also underlines the types of short cuts many businesses will take to make money in the absence of government standards. It was never about tires, it was about tires AND roof crush standards AND crash compatibility AND handling flaws AND high centre of gravity AND antique designs and components.

The most troubling question Bradsher poses is: what happens when the vehicles are dumped by the housewives that pilot them, and find their ways second and thirdhand to twenty year old males? He argues that drivers with a more aggressive profile will be taking possession of these vehicles just as they are deteriorating.

With respect to wagons, I think it is interesting to note that the Europeans generally spin off an estate variant of mainstream models, and I think sedan design benefits. Shapes tend to be taughter, more coherent and wear longer than a majority of Asian and North American designs.

I wanted a wagon, I really did. However, I faced two major hurdles:
One, she didn’t like the way wagons looked (with the exception of the Passat wagon), she “wasn’t ready” for a wagon. Fair enough.
Two, the supposed benefits of wagons weren’t nearly as great as I’d have thought. The two wagons we could concentrate on, the Passat and the Outback, didn’t really produce mileage that was much better than most CUVs (Patriot, RAV4, CRV, or Element).
In the end, she wanted a trucklet, and that’s what we got.

The author is absolutely incorrect. What killed the wagon was that “light trucks,” including minivans and SUVs had a much lower CAFE standard than cars. The car mfgs lobbied for that loophole, and it gave them all the incentive in the world to push minivans and SUVs at the expense of wagons. There were minivans and SUVs in the ’60s, the Microbus, the International Travelall, the KJeep Wagoneer, the Chevy Greenbriar and the Ford Econoline Van (advertised by the Peanuts characters, among others). (For the real story, see The High and the Mighty, by Keith Bradsher.)”

Respectfully, I have to disagree. Though I’m against CAFE standards, I don’t care to let my opposition cloud my view.

It’s true there were minivans and SUVs in the 1960s, but they really don’t compare with what came in the ’80s. The Microbus, Econoline, and Greenbrier of the early ’60s were truck-like, and forced the driver and front passenger to double as bumpers. 1960s mothers (and let’s remember that wagons are primarily about mothers) didn’t feel like climbing up into a trucky vehicle where they sat over the front wheels. These were poor substitutes for the traditional wagon.

The minivans that appeared in the 80s had the front wheels where people like them to be – out in front of the driver. These vans also had enough of a hood to make people feel safe. No longer than the traditional wagon -shorter in some cases- they had more room than traditional wagons. Essentially the minivan was a tall station wagon, with transversely mounted engines and front wheel drive.

The choice for a family hauler came down to the packaging efficiency of the minivan vs. the packaging inefficiency of the traditional station wagon. Not suprisingly the minivan won.

That may be true in respect to the motivation of the automakers to bring them to market. But ultimately, it is the consumer who decides whether or not to buy the product, a decision that has nothing to do with CAFE.

I’ll offer a bit of an off-the-cuff theory. During the early 80’s, we began to see the growing population of cheap compact pickup trucks such as those from Toyota and Nissan. These trucks were cheaper than cars because their safety and emissions requirements were lower and therefore cheaper with which to comply. Their low price made them popular with young people who wanted basic transportation, and they carried a bit more cool factor than did the subcompact cars that were their most direct price competitors.

As a result, you ended up with a large population of younger people driving trucks who in past years would have been driving cars. As these younger drivers became accustomed to trucks for both their virtues (ride height, carrying capacity, durability) and their drawbacks (sloppy handling, poor fuel economy, boxy styling), they evolved into becoming logical buyers of SUV’s and minivans as they aged and became more affluent.

For this group, transitioning into SUV’s was an easy step. Along the way, trucks lost their stigma as being redneck transporation, so that class barrier was breached. While the automakers had motivations to run with this ball, they would alone not have had the power to persuade buyers to buy them just because it served the automakers to do so.

If gas hits $4+ per gallon, I think you’ll see more wagons. If fuel is expensive, it will motivate changes in behavior, and I doubt that it will be getting much cheaper any time soon.

It seems to be more than random distribution that only the SUVs are either on their sides or upside down and that the only car is still rightside up.

By the way, I’d also recommend reading High the Mighty. It’s a really terrific book on the history of the SUV, I had trouble putting it down.

I certainly didn’t mean to imply that minivans don’t have a place in the world. As a child, I found the Microbus–then the quintessential minivan–to be a very compelling concept, and I still do. I can imagine owning one if I had a wife and kids, and unlike many people, I’m not at all put off by its image as a family hauler–although I’d prefer one that handled like a car. But if it hadn’t been for CAFE loopholes, there would have been a lot more wagons, and more compelling wagons, fewer minivans, and probably even fewer SUVs.

Love the way you describe your problems with driving the Microbus. And I can tell you that later on–my mother had a ‘97 Caravan–they were quite zippy with the 6.

The author is absolutely incorrect. What killed the wagon was that “light trucks,” including minivans and SUVs had a much lower CAFE standard than cars. The car mfgs lobbied for that loophole, and it gave them all the incentive in the world to push minivans and SUVs at the expense of wagons. There were minivans and SUVs in the ’60s, the Microbus, the International Travelall, the KJeep Wagoneer, the Chevy Greenbriar and the Ford Econoline Van (advertised by the Peanuts characters, among others). (For the real story, see The High and the Mighty, by Keith Bradsher.)

I graduated from riding in the “way back” to the rear seat, to the navigator’s seat, and finally to the pilot seat. I’ve logged many a mile in the traditional family wagon.

The author is absoutely correct – the vastly superior packaging efficiency of a minivan is what killed the full sized wagon. Assuming one doesn’t want to block the view through the rear window, a full size wagon really doens’t have any more room than a sedan it just has a roof over the trunk, instead of a lid – so everyone can see what you’ve got in there.

I do like a compact wagon though. A minivan isn’t an alternative to a compact wagon because a compact buyer, presumably, doesn’t want a large vehicle.

We had an ‘87 Civic wagon. I really wish Honda still made a civic wagon. Ours didn’t have AWD, but it was available. The best of all possible worlds – small, yet roomy, and available AWD, and good fuel economy.

My wife’s CR-V certainly is a station wagon. Granted it sits higher than any of Mom’s old Vista Cruisers, and it’s got AWD, but still it’s a wagon.

What that picture doesn’t show are the people who looked outside at the weather and stayed home because they knew their FWD cars with all-season tires wouldn’t make it. I had a party to go to across town and had no trouble getting around in my 4wd pickup. The Subaru would also have been fine but if I’d had a FWD car I think I would have phoned my regrets.

With two young sons, the Sable’s way back seat was regularly in use for the then frequent two moms and four kids outings. The Pathfinder’s seating for five meant no such luck. The Sable had tons of storage capacity, a smooth quiet ride, and got better than decent gas mileage. The Pathfinder not so much, not so much and not so much.

But the Sable apparently screamed “Mommy-car” (although I couldn’t hear it), and the Pathfinder had that just about to mountain bike to some white water rafting look, and that was that.

Some 100,000 fashionable if uncomfortable miles later, we journeyed back, and traded the Pathfinder for a BMW 525it wagon. Still no third row (with our sons by then teenagers those two moms and four kids ventures were no longer an issue), but you could pull of a major Costco run or throw in a bike without too much trouble. It’s by far the best car we’ve ever owned. With 90K miles on the clock, the BMW has done years of double duty as a modestly capable hauler and as a …well, BMW.

Having said all of that, it’s still not surprising to me that the “sport” wagon niche is a narrow one. Although our wagon has been more practical than a sedan, it’s still way less useful than any of a number of CUV’s available today. Most have the critic-derided but extra kid friendly third rows, get semi tolerable mileage, and can stow massive amounts of gear. We’ve sheared a couple of front spoilers off the BMW on dirt roads and in the snow, had to deal with chains in the absence of 4WD, and generally had to apply advanced geometric thinking to packing for long trips. And gas mileage probably hasn’t been any better than in something like an MDX or Acacia.

But I just drove back from the mountains yesterday in the BMW, and the experience highlighted why the trade-offs have been more than worth it. We may not have had as much stuff with us when we got there, but the driver at least had a hell of a good time along the way.

starlightmica,
I certainly wasn’t forgetting that. It’s still a wagon as far as I’m concerned. But that classification, and what they did to get it, is more evidence of how much different CAFE standards for cars and light trucks warps the market. Thanks for bringing that up.

Johnster,
great photo of the fate of SUVs in winter!

A “hopped up econobox” is just the most recent incarnation of the musclecar. A Nova with a 472 Cadillac engine was still a Nova. Well, a Nova with a weight distribution problem, I suppose.

Hmmm, be a 23 year old ricer in a hopped hop econo box, or a 23 year old driving a mid life crisis mobile for the masses. Meh.