Long Roofs, Gone Too Soon
The station wagon didn't die of natural causes. It got squeezed out by minivans, then finished off by crossovers that do the same job while sitting six inches higher and driving worse. What gets lost in the swap is the part enthusiasts keep bringing up, which is that a wagon handles like the sedan it's based on and swallows a bicycle without folding anything. A few companies still build them for Europe, and the rest of us are stuck shopping used. Here's 20 wagons that earned their way back into a showroom.
Evgeni Adutskevich on Unsplash
1. Chevrolet Nomad
Two doors and hardtop styling, plus a tailgate with ribbed chrome that looked like nothing else on the road in 1955. It was a poor wagon by any practical measure, with two doors and a cargo hold compromised by that roofline. It sold badly for exactly those reasons. Nobody has built a wagon that pretty since. Chevrolet reused the name later on a much duller car, which tells you how the industry thinks about this.
2. Ford Country Squire
The wood paneling was vinyl by the seventies and nobody cared. What people remember is the rear-facing third row, where a generation of kids waved at strangers through the back glass for an entire interstate. A modern version with actual wood and no pretense of being an SUV would sell to more people than Ford thinks.
3. Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser
The raised glass roof panels over the second row made the interior feel like a train car. Olds built it because the dedicated wagon platform allowed the extra height, and passengers in the back got a view of the sky instead of a headliner. Panoramic roofs came back decades later without the strange, wonderful stepped roofline.
4. Mercedes-Benz 300TD
The W123 wagon is the reason certain people believe diesels last forever. Plenty are still running past 400,000 miles with self-leveling rear suspension that still works. Mercedes built it like a piece of infrastructure, and clean examples now sell for more than they did new.
5. Peugeot 505 Wagon
The rear seat area was long enough for a genuine third row, and the suspension soaked up broken pavement in a way nothing from Germany could match. It became the default family car across much of Africa, where they ran for decades on roads that would destroy anything else. Peugeot hasn't sold a car in America since 1991.
6. Volvo 240 Wagon
Boxy is the wrong word for a car this intentional, since every angle was drawn around usable space. Owners kept them for twenty years and handed them to their kids, which is terrible business and excellent engineering. Owning one meant learning to do your own brakes, and most owners did.
7. AMC Eagle
A four-wheel-drive wagon with raised suspension, on sale in 1980, well before anyone had coined the word crossover. AMC drew the template for what every automaker now sells and went bankrupt anyway. Its descendants fill every dealer lot in the country.
8. Buick Roadmaster Estate
Nearly eighteen feet of body-on-frame American wagon carrying the same LT1 V8 that went into the Corvette. It weighed well over two tons and would still run the quarter mile faster than most cars in the parking lot. GM killed it in 1996 to free up the plant for more SUVs.
9. BMW E34 M5 Touring
Built in small numbers by BMW Motorsport and never sold in the United States, which still bothers people. Under the hood sat the same hand-assembled straight six from the sedan, hooked to a wagon body that nobody thought would sell. Fewer than a thousand exist, and the ones that come up for sale now cost more than the sedans ever did.
10. Audi RS2 Avant
Porsche helped build it, right down to the brakes and the mirrors lifted from the 911. The turbocharged five-cylinder made 315 horsepower in 1994, which made it quicker to sixty than most supercars of the era. Audi has built fast wagons ever since, though none of them carry quite the same strangeness as a family car finished by Porsche.
11. Volvo 850 R
A front-drive Swedish family wagon making 240 horsepower with turbo lag you could set a watch by. It famously raced in the British Touring Car Championship with the tailgate and everything, which remains the best marketing decision any wagon ever got. The seats are still among the best ever fitted to anything with four doors.
12. Honda Accord Wagon
Built in Ohio and sold without much fanfare through the nineties. Clean ones are almost impossible to find now. It did everything an Accord sedan did with a useful cargo hold and a fold-flat rear seat that was clever for the time. The whole car weighed about what a loaded Civic weighs now.
13. Saab 9-5 SportCombi
The cargo area had a sliding rail system with a load divider that folded up out of the deck, the kind of detail Saab spent its remaining money on. The ride was soft and the turbo came on late. The whole car felt designed by people who drove in snow eight months a year. Nobody builds anything quite like it now.
14. Nissan Stagea 260RS
Autech built a wagon around the RB26 twin-turbo engine and drivetrain from the Skyline GT-R. It looked like something a Japanese family would use for a Costco run and would embarrass sports cars at a light. Roughly a thousand were made, and they have finally aged past the twenty-five year line that lets Americans import them legally.
15. Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG Wagon
The S210 version came with a hand-built V8 and a suspension setup that kept the back level under load. It was the fastest way to move a large dog ever offered by a mainstream manufacturer. It arrived before AMG cars needed launch control or a driving mode selector.
Hoanseum ShekymrE on Wikimedia
16. Volkswagen Passat W8 Variant
Volkswagen put a 4.0-liter W8 engine in a Passat wagon and offered it with a manual gearbox, which almost nobody bought. The engine was complicated enough that independent mechanics still quote the job carefully before agreeing to it. It remains the strangest car VW ever sold to ordinary families, and the manual versions have become collectible for that alone.
17. Subaru Legacy GT Wagon
A turbocharged flat four and a five-speed manual, wrapped in a car your accountant could drive without comment. Subaru sold it in America for about three model years before replacing the whole idea with the Outback. Used examples with clean head gaskets have become a minor obsession among people who know what to look for.
Tokumeigakarinoaoshima on Wikimedia
18. Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX Wagon
Mitsubishi built an Evo wagon for the Japanese market with the same engine and drivetrain as the sedan. Buyers could get a manual gearbox and the roof rack at the same time. It was gone within two years and never officially left Japan, which is why the few in America arrived on a boat.
19. Dodge Magnum SRT8
A 6.1-liter Hemi in a low-roofed wagon with a chopped-looking greenhouse and terrible rear visibility. It looked mean in a way almost no wagon ever has, and that was part of why families skipped it. Chrysler discontinued it in 2008 and the styling has aged better than anyone predicted.
Greg Gjerdingen from Willmar, USA on Wikimedia
20. Cadillac CTS-V Sport Wagon
A 556-horsepower V8 with a blower on top, available with a six-speed manual, in a Cadillac wagon. The spec sheet reads like something a teenager made up. Only a few hundred manual cars were built and owners will not part with them. GM has not tried anything this unreasonable since.
Michael Gil from Calgary, AB, Canada on Wikimedia
