The Station Wagon – Whatever happened to it?
Way back in my elementary and middle school days, I remember riding in the rear facing seats of my friend’s Ford Taurus station wagon. For me, the idea of climbing into the trunk of a car and watching other people out the back window, albeit still while in a seatbelt, was just the coolest thing. Now, that would never happen. Even beyond the safety regulations that would prevent that anyway, you would be hard pressed to find many station wagons to buy anymore anyway. So why are they just kind of not a thing anymore? Let’s get right into it.
So what exactly is a station wagon anyway? There’s room for debate here, but we’ll just keep it simple for right now. A station wagon is a car with a rear hatch, an elongated window on either side of the rear cargo area, and a roof that covers most of that area. To put it another way, a Mazda 3 hatchback has windows for each passenger it’s able to carry: two in the front and two in the back. The rearmost window is a tiny extension of the rear passenger window, similar to the quarter window in a two-seat sports car. You’d never be able to get an extra set of seats, or much cargo, in the back of a Mazda 3 hatchback let alone two more passengers, even if they did sit backwards. A station wagon would have that capability because the cargo area was extended.
So that’s a station wagon. We already know that in America, there are some great hatchbacks available to us, but we also know they just don’t sell that well. It’s no surprise then that station wagons don’t even do as good in terms of sales as hatchbacks. But let’s take it one step further. While there are plenty of hatchback options from various manufacturers, there are very few station wagon options.
Let’s look at some of the available options:
The Subaru Outback is first. The Outback is kind of the exception to the rule. It is technically a station wagon, and it does sell quite well, but I think it fits better in the realm of a luxury SUV or Crossover than a station wagon… at least today it does. It used to be more wagon-y back in the day, but it’s changed since then. It sits higher than it used to, it’s larger than it used to be, and it has all wheel drive. We can dismiss the all-wheel drive as a Subaru thing, but beyond that, I just think it’s outgrown itself and graduated to a different class.
Next is the Golf Sportwagen and its younger sibling, the Alltrack. I’m personally a fan of both cars and a fan of Volkswagen in general, despite the recent scandal. Both models lag pretty far behind in sales to the Outback, let alone the Jetta, on which both cars are based. Volkswagen also has the golf, which is already a hatchback and is much more popular.
From here, the list gets a little sparse. There’s the Mini Cooper Clubman, which only caters only to very specific people with a very specific taste and often proves unreliable. The Fiat 500L tells much the same story, but it’s about three times worse than the Mini. I’m not going to go into detail as to why that car doesn’t sell except to say that it’s because of every single thing about it. It’s easy to see why things aren’t looking up on this end of the spectrum.
From there we have to change gears, because with the next few station wagons, there’s a little bit of a price hike. We have the Audi A4 Allroad, the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, the Volvo V90 and V60, the BMW 3 series wagon, the new Jaguar XF Sportbrake, and the Porsche Panamera. Given the target audience, I think it’s pretty easy to see why none of these would be incredibly popular.
Not all these are bad though. I happen to think that the Volvos are quite handsome. The Mercedes has an AMG variant that’s really rare, but it also matches the performance of several modern supercars. The new Jaguar looks fantastic and probably sounds just as good. The Porsche looks funky, but if you like performance, it’s easy to get over the looks. The BMW just sells better in sedan version. As for the Allroad… I think that’s really the only car here that doesn’t do anything for me. If you want one though, I’d suggest getting the Volkswagen Alltrack which is cheaper, better looking, and essentially the same car.
So now we have to get back to answering the question of why station wagons don’t sell very well anymore. To me, it’s obvious from the available crop of wagons mentioned above. Besides the Subaru Outback which I still think is more of an SUV, there really isn’t anything that any of these cars have at their given price point that stands out.
The Volkswagens continue to be undermined by their own scandal and the Golf, even if they aren’t diesels. The Volvo and German offerings aren’t exactly known for their reliability, and the people who’d have the money to buy them often opt for a larger sedan or just another large SUV. The exception is the Porsche which has the best overall performance, and has been redesigned to look better than it did when it first came out. Only the people who understand its capability will buy it, and while they know their stuff, those kind of people are just few and far between. As for the Fiat and Mini, I’m really not sure what to say except that I know I wouldn’t want to be seen driving either of them. To add insult to injury, I wouldn’t want to be in the same area code as the Fiat 500L if I could help it.
Stations wagons don’t sell anymore because they just aren’t cool. People don’t see any value in what they have to offer. The current crop of wagons is either just too dull, too expensive for the people who would buy them, or just bad. Not only that, but SUVs are just the “in thing” right now. They are closer to a wagon than a hatchback, but they also have much more all-around capability as well as that commanding view of the road that so many people seem to crave. Even more than that, SUVs are offered at so many price points that anybody can get one, even in all wheel drive.
That being said, I still think station wagons are still pretty cool. They are like the pickup trucks of the car world. The problem is that we have pickup trucks so people just usually buy those. I’m still holding out a false hope for the car I intentionally left off this list: the Buick Regal TourX. Yes, it’s a Buick, and yes, that makes it seriously uncool for most people. I also think they are going to sell about 10 of them total, but I still think it will be a pretty awesome car. Not only does it look good, but Buick is trying to reinvent themselves like Cadillac has done over the past several years. Remember the CTS-V Wagon? It was a result of a similar re-branding initiative. It was a seriously cool, seriously good-looking station wagon with a Corvette engine. It performed like it too, it was awesome!
The Buick won’t be anything like that, but the intention behind the product is the same. I genuinely hope that it does well for itself. It’s really not that expensive and offers a lot for the price. Of course, after they don’t sell that well, the TourX will disappear into the history books just like all the other forgettable vehicles of the decade. You can find it under the “just not quite cool enough” tab along with all the other cars that lost their fight with the almighty SUV, along with all the attempts to bring back the once popular station wagon.
–SWF
