QOTD: Another Member Of The Brown Wagon Club?
Published: October 20th, 2014
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While helping my grandmother hunt for a new car, I tried to steer her towards a Mazda3 Sport. She didn’t take to the “game changer” (which is the tagline for the car’s marketing campaign, not an attempt to cash in on my catch phrase), but I did notice a similar example on the lot.
This color, called “Titanium Flash”, looks more like brown to me. As far as I’m concerned, the line between station wagon, hatchback and CUV has been sufficiently blurred that this can qualify as a member of the mythical brown wagon species – and you can get it in a manual as well. I’ll defer to the B&B on this one, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s time to count every possible example to help shore up ranks.
More by Derek Kreindler
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Someone will probably find a way to prove me wrong, but I think a (five-door) wagon has to have four pillars, not three.
I think that whether something is a hatchback or a wagon has a lot to do with how it is styled and the length of the cargo area. If the rear-quarter-panel windows are small or non-existent, or the car has a significant slope, I'd consider it a hatchback. Anything subcompact is almost definitely a hatchback. If it's got a longer set of quarter-panel windows and a long-ish cargo area, it's a wagon. That would put the Mazda3 5-door squarely in hatchback territory. I'd also put the Focus 5-door, Imprezza 5-door, Elantra GT, and defunct cars like the Vibe, Matrix and Caliber in hatchback territory. Wagons, then, are few and far between. The only current wagon that I can think of is the Jetta SportWagen, which is what I happen to drive. The old HHR would count as well.
I'm not the biggest fan of red, but the shade Mazda's been heavily showing on the new 3 and 6 is the one to go for. Really, though, it'd be nice if there were more colours available overall, to the point the brown renaissance wasn't noteworthy. Who just wants a variety of muted greys, and maybe a burgundy or barely discernible blue?
We sure are getting lots of mileage out of grandma's car choice.