Bring back the station wagon
theweek.com
theweek.com
Fits 5, not 8, but today's families are smaller than 1960.
It has been essentially the same car for 20 years. A 2020 Outback looks not that much different than a 2000 Outback.
Always surprised Toyota just doesn't copy it. But maybe the thinking is, a "Toyota Outback" would take away from Toyota SUV sales more than from Subaru.
You'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between the stripped shells without looking at the head/tail light opening shaped. The pile of drive-train parts is more or less identical save a 5-gal bucket of minor stuff
I guess they try to sell what folks want to buy - at least the WRX and STI still exist (parallels to the Porsche SUVs keeping the 911 alive)
I liked driving the 2004 version more. It just felt faster, likely because it was lower to the ground. But the 2010 looks much more attractive, and the extra vertical space makes it much easier to transport large things. For example, we once fit a full-size washing machine and a full-size dryer in the back of the 2010 after we came across them at a yard sale on a day trip. They would never have fit in the 2004.
All of that said, the 2004 was unlike a station wagon in that there was no third-row seating option. It maxed out at 5 people.
Pretty good mileage (over 30mpg highway) and very spacious for weekend trips or longer commutes (5 adults sit comfortably).
It's fairly capable towing - can easily pull a pair of SeaDoos or a small utility trailer and has all the "smart" bells and whistles as standard equipment vs. the Audi Allroad we were comparing it against where the lane-keeping/blind spot detection was only available on the +$15k trim.
Hehe,
2020 Outback
Wheelbase 2,750 mm (108.3 in)[3]
Length 4,840 mm (190.6 in)[3]
Width 1,840 mm (72.4 in)[3]
Height 1,500 mm (59.1 in)[3]
Wheelbase 115.9 in (2,944 mm)
Length 217.7 in (5,530 mm)
Width 79.9 in (2,029 mm)
Height 60.3 in (1,532 mm)
People forget just how big old station wagons were. I used to roll in a B body, so it amuses me when people talk about how much bigger cars are today. Like, yeah, a Civic of today is the size of an Accord of the 90s, but those old full-sized GM cars were gigantic land yachts.
So basically think of the largest old sedan you've ever been in. It's that much room.
Now I drive a Ford E350 that is 236.7 in (6,012 mm). It's 3.45 feet longer than your Outback. I think it's the smallest car that will hold my family. It looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ford_E-Series_wagon.jpg
About the same weight (4k per Google) and the road-master is shorter.
Hell, an Altima is pushing into 80s base trim half-ton curb weight territory.
>People forget just how big old station wagons were. I used to roll in a B body, so it amuses me when people talk about how much bigger cars are today.
Because the overwhelming majority of people who are saying these things were born to well enough to do families that they never got to live first hand the experience of the Country Squire that had to do it all. There was the minivan for kid hauling and the Accord (or whatever) for commuting.
You know how people today judge a Dodge Journey or used Chevy Tahoe. That's what station wagons were back then.
Not sure your sources, but a 94s Roadmaster weighed about 4572lbs according to the Owners Manual. Perhaps you were looking the sedan weight?
The Outback is 3753 in base or 3917 in turbo guise. So maybe not 1000lbs, but not far off.
The rear of the Falcon was so wide it could take a full (Australian standard) pallet in the trunk with the back seats folded down. I assume it was designed with this in mind and I was called on to move pallets at my work a lot in my younger days thanks to this car. The Outback could not do this. There's far far less space and the wheel wells on the Subaru are huge.
The Subaru Outback also objectively had less power than the older EA falcon (165hp vs 186hp) was higher off the ground and had AWD. This meant the Subaru was better off-road but worse everywhere else, in particular for freeway driving. I never went off road despite living in rural Australia.
I miss the old Falcon station wagons. They were essentially a car designed for regional Australia in every way. They don't make the Falcons in Australia anymore though. Ford insists that a Ford Fusion is the equivalent and imports those instead rather than continuing the Australian production lines.
Good memories!
It appears platform consolidation means that the latest generation of Legacy and Outback don't differ as significantly as one or two generations earlier, but you can't get the wagon without the lifted suspension.
A FWD wagon will practically get stuck on wet grass if there's even a slight incline. AWD is a ton better. And I say this as someone who has FWD and AWD variants of the same station wagon in my garage right now.
To add to the Outbacks are Volvos, maybe not as omnipresent in the US recently, but in my mind Volvo is hardwired to stationwagon form.
Another rather recent urban sighting is VW wagons, kinda odd to spot these among the sea of their SUVs.
https://www.volvocars.com/au/about/australia/i-roll-enewslet...
Volvos are great, but they're an upmarket marque. IIRC the cheapest wagon they offer stateside starts aroumd $50k.
The XC70 was also amazing to own in the city. It was like driving a mountain goat. There were many times where I was able to parallel park in an uncleared spot in the winter.
It's almost to the point that a minivan is actually a nonconformist choice.
Looking it up, they do have 4 cylinder versions. I think the other problem is the sight lines don't look great but admittedly I have not been in a Vernza. I see the 2021 version is now a basically a SUV and not a wagon.
I drove an older Volvo station wagon once. A repair shop had one as a loaner. On any big bump, my head would hit the roof.
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g26961972/best-station...
https://newsroom.vw.com/vehicles/the-golf-sportwagen-and-all...
The entire market has been heading towards SUVs/crossovers for some time; the same thing that happened to wagons is happening to sedans now.
>Who wants an automotive monoculture?
Clearly, the market.
And to be clear here, I outright hate SUVs/CUVs and live the sedan life.
> Clearly, the market.
If all you can buy is golf pants but you want tough jeans, would you go bottomless or buy the golf pants?
Cars I would buy instantly:
* a car with an electric engine that goes no faster than 80mph while retaining dynamics and that does not come with a million gadgets (as in "electric engine, all else analog"). Please, also in a variant with enough space to fit me, my wife, the kid and the dog. Still, no mandatory audio-visual indoor entertainment for the dog, please.
* a car optimized for DIY repairs (I live in southern Morocco, getting an OBD2-scan at my authorized Nissan dealer was $30 - or 300 small bread or 75kg of flour or 3 days of work for a cop who just started work. A friend's Porsche Cayenne needs to be towed 12h northwards just for the inspection by an authorized dealer).
I don't see them on the market.
We don't, though, because people are buying SUVs/CUVs.
The Golf Sportwagen (formerly sold as the Jetta Sportwagen) was available until 2019, but is no longer.
Once in a blue moon I see a Jaguar wagon stateside, although that may be because 'estates' are still quite popular in the UK
I used to drive an early 90s Suburban when I lived in Canada, and that's a real truck. Todays SUVs mostly pretend to be a truck, and I didn't want a pretend wagon.
I'm not a Dad (as far as I know), but people do call my wagon a dadmobile, and I love it even more because it is derided and under-appreciated by most people, except for us in the know.
It's a shame BMW doesn't make an M5 wagon, and I don't think they export any 5 wagons outside of Europe.
Audi has got it right in canning the RS6 sedan and only shipping out the wagon.
I suspect the unappreciated wagon will have it's hayday in the future when the roads are full of SUVs and they'll be considered a special oddity.
Even something like an Odyssey or a Civic is about five or six inches taller than they was in the 90s. If Chevy added six inches of height to a Buick Roadmaster, they'd end up with a vehicle as tall as a Chevy Blazer (a crossover), but over two feet (!!!!) longer!!!
Which brings me to another point people seem to forget about classic station wagons: they were fucking massive. A Buick Roadmaster could haul kids, furniture, Labradors, and ass because it was roughly the foot print of a modern Escalade. Not everyone wants to drive around a 18 foot beast of a vehicle, so station wagons became smaller and we called them crossovers.
So yeah, a modern Rav4 is going to feel smaller than a Grampa's Olds Cruiser, because it is a lot smaller.
There is no wagon or indeed crossover anymore like those antediluvian beasts.
You can't raise the whole vehicle several inches (although crossovers have weirdly low ground clearance) without affecting the handling. Modern wagons corner like modern cars, not like minivans.
The modern crossover/compact SUV trend is worthy of nothing kinder than active contempt.
I would prefer a more full-size wagon (think Volvo XC70/V90) with a higher clearance (like an Outback), but it seems I'd have to give up the third pedal.
The upside is this might push me to be yet another van-converting yuppie for my camping/snowboarding needs and replace the wagon with a tiny electric commuter when it finally dies.
It's also good theft deterrent! A previous manual of mine was broken into and they didn't even bother to take the iPod in plain view or anything else; I think they wanted the car and didn't realize they couldn't drive it till they popped the window.
Less bugs!
Seriously, dealing with all those auto-shifting is like knowing what you need and then a hard work to find how to make this stupid automatic to perform what you want as no one of them works as good as you wish. And why to have this extra troulble if you can do all you need with manual stick easily?
Also automatic is extremelly boring. I was thinking like you once but once I 'eaten enough' of this 'automatic' transmission I came to a conclusion that it never works and never will. At least not the way I want it.
Also real control with manual vs 'who knows what it will do' with automatic.
On the road, the manual needs no attention other than to keep it in a gear that doesn't lug the engine. Being in too high a gear is the only thing that causes excess heat. In the automatic, despite two coolers in my model (air to air and air to coolant, lots of lines and aluminum to fill and have fail), keeping an eye on the trans temp is a necessity.
Service is also simpler. Manual gets oil topped off at normal oil change intervals (seldom needs it), and a change when I do clutches (every 100k-200k miles, depending on load.) Automatics require the same level of fluid top-off, but also require fluid flushes every 60-80k miles (requiring a machine I don't have.) Though it's never been necessary, I can rebuild a manual transmission in my shop fairly easily, where an automatic takes much more specialist knowledge and has many more moving parts. In this application, it's likely you need an automatic transmission rebuild every 200-250k miles (way more expensive than two good clutches.)
This all aside, where in the US can you rent a manual for the weekend? Even the luxury car segment has transitioned to paddle shifting everywhere I've asked (which is everywhere I've rented.)
That would be why I bought a used 2010 Volvo V50—a wagon with AWD, 6-speed, and a turbo. Volvo sold so few of that model in the US I felt lucky to find it.
Price is also a huge factor. Minivans max out around $50-60k with all the bells and whistles. It's not uncommon for a smaller SUV or crossover to reach that amount, and larger SUVs can easily approach $70-80k, with luxury brands even crossing into six figure territory. I just went to Honda's website, and a 2022 Odyssey with all of the extra features is $50k. A Toyota SEQUOIA starts at $50,400. For comparison within the same brand, Toyota's minivan maxes out around $53k with Honda providing much more similarly priced Crossovers/SUVs at around $50k as well. The SEQUOIA SUV maxes out right at $70k.
They're available in luxury models or economy models, and lots of stuff in between, so a pretty wide variety to chose from, even if many people don't.
All of that said, I've never been able to fully convince my wife that we should get a minivan, due to all of the negative stereotypes. All I get is "No. I'm not a soccer mom."
And then we buy a ridiculous $50k Ascent...
I'm not a fan of the driver assist nonsense. That stuff is dangerous. It actually yanks on the steering wheel, but of course it has no clue about the real world (no strong AI here) and obviously impedes safe control of the vehicle. Fortunately there is a way to turn that nonsense off. It probably still phones home with photos, GPS, and more.
It does have decent performance, particularly on slippery surfaces. To beat the Ascent you'd probably have to pay more or give up that 8th seat.
The Transit is practically made out of cardboard compared to the E-series it's replacing.
The Fiat Ducato is a POS in every way but it's too cheap for fleets who only loot at initial buy-in to pass up.
The Sprinter is a nightmare in terms of TCO. I didn't think anything could be worse than the Ram van it replaced but it's trying very hard.
Then there's the Transit connect. Those twats bent over backward to re-use a bunch of Focus parts bin stuff and neutered a perfectly good vehicle. There's plenty of room for a real van-worthy suspension and live axle under there but nope, you're stuck with <1000lb cargo because Focus.
And the City Promaster and NV200 are the same damn story with their respective brand's own drivetrain issues.
Give me back my motherf*king Astro and Aerostar.
GMC Savana, still a real van?
Yet the Mercedes Benz Metris is the only properly-sized minivan available in the US. Unfortunately it is targeted for commercial use like airport taxis, so they sell it as RWD-only and with a plastic commercial-grade interior so it is overpriced for what you get.
The best station wagon of the last 40 years was the P3 Volvo, which you should still be able to find used at reasonable prices and with reasonable mileage. The exterior design was excellent and it keeps looking better and better with age, but the real brilliance was the interior. The driver and front passenger got the absolute best seats Volvo has ever made, and the rear seat was a 40/20/40 split with the seat belts integrated - you could fold seats down for cargo purposes and you never had to deal with belts getting in the way of anything. Combined with extremely durable carpet that looked nice enough, you got a car that could take all the abuse a station wagon should be able to take, yet look and feel pretty nice (it was definitely NOT a luxury interior though).
Efforts to market wagons to customers in the US over the past couple decades suggest that even when they're available, people don't buy them unless they're styled and marketed as crossovers.
My best guess is the motivation is largely social, driven by a perception of what kind of person drives each style of vehicle.
Partially because or our fuel efficiency standards that are based on footprint and our preference for (often excessive) engine power. Can't get a big engine in a small car because it won't hit the efficiency numbers, so better get a bigger car.
Yes, I understand that people might wish to transport a fridge or sofa. No, you don't need a minivan to do that.
That's why this area of car and truck design needs regulation.
Minivan is great for refrigerators. Wagon roof wins for anything more than 7ft long or that comes in sheets.
When I'm not on 2 wheels, I'm most often in a minivan, too.
That’s called a motorcycle
As CEO of Ford, Alan Mulally went to congress and argued that CAFE was expensive to follow and ultimately counter-productive to environmental ends, proposing instead a one-size fits all carbon tax.
It was obviously a fraught endeavor, while CAFE creates misery for consumers and producers alike, it's at least obfuscated away from the public eye, unlike a carbon tax which would be political suicide.
Math: Burning a gallon of gas produces 20lbs of CO2. A ton is 2000 pounds. The one dollar tax provides $100/ton to capture carbon from the atmosphere. Multiple ramping/experimental atmospheric carbon capture technologies are targeting $20-75/ton.
If we can pay an extra dollar per gallon because of Russian hackers, or because of questionable wars in the middle east, we can certainly do it to save the planet!
There are separate standards for "cars" and "light trucks" -- a difference of about 10mpg. When the standards were created in the '70s, "light trucks" were expected to be, well, trucks: body-on-frame pickups and SUVs with real utility. Nowadays, all these crossovers are considered "light trucks" as well, while a wagon or hatchback is a "car". In essence, the automakers get a 10 mpg relaxation in standards (worth, at current rates, $550 in EPA fines alone per vehicle sold) for taking the same wagon, jacking up the suspension a couple inches (thereby bungling the handling and pedestrian safety), and adding some "rugged" plastic cladding.
The Legacy is objectively small compared to many cars on the road in Australia, it fits comfortably in small car parking spaces and yet can still carry everything I need it to.
For recent years, Subaru has sold a model called the Levorg here which seems like the spiritual successor to the Legacy wagon in many ways. BMW, VW, Audi, Volvo etc. all still sell wagon format vehicles here which is nice, but as noted by about everyone else, the direction is towards a more off-road capable crossover format which I not looking forward to should I ever be looking for a new car again.
I’ll finish with my real wish list for a modern wagon, and it reads like the features on my Legacy - Enough power to be a fun drive, low enough to be somewhat competent handling, manual transmission (not a deal breaker , but I love my 6 speed), spacious enough to fit an IKEA dinner table into the back
Wait, who is the "everyone else", what's the "all the difference"? I am not understanding what the author is saying is preferable about station wagons to anyone (instead of just being cosmetically different but about equivalent to an SUV), am I missing it in the article?
Station wagons are still heavy cars, but designed to actually be roomy, not just take up space. We had a small station wagon when I was a kid (Skoda Favorit) and it could fit a whole bicycle in its trunk.
Other than the really big SUVs (Escalade size), I've yet to find an SUV that will take a bike in its trunk.
Additionally, drivers of smaller cars due to weight arms race for increased safety.
> The station wagon, with its roomy trunk, wide interior, and seating, as in the now-collectible Buick Roadmaster Estate, for up to eight people (or fewer people plus equipment, bikes, or pets) clearly answered this demand. These vehicles boasted powerful engines and could weigh well into the 4,000-pound range.
> The main benefit of an SUV in a crash is its heavy weight, which as mentioned above, many station wagons had too.
I don't think the author is thinking lighter weight when it comes to station wagons.
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/article/we-call-the-back-ba...
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-s-child-seats-false-ki...
Body positivity. Big is beautiful.
> The general derision roomy vehicles sometimes receive from car enthusiasts or urbanists is silly, and can evince a cluelessness about the needs of families.
This derision ended up with vehicles getting various bad reputations. This caused people to avoid the vehicle that was best for them so they went to the least bad option that didn't have a bad reputation: SUVs.
I think a lot of people would be better served by a station wagon or minivan.
"consumers pick up on thing people in the know were saying for 10yr straight 10yr ago but recently stopped saying and run with it for 10yr"
But the overall number of SUVs and crossovers is still rising.
I personally love the space and utility of my BMW 3rd touring and I will not buy any electric car which is not a station wagon.
This is not even mentioning the superiority of sliding doors when it comes to loading/unloading in parking lots, etc.
There's a very strong interest in a few, but they have to be special: older Benzes, early BMW 3-series Touring, Roadmasters, Cadillac CTS-Vs with the manual transmission, AMG wagons, early woodies.
> meaning they have utterly vanished.
Most were used for their purpose - they weren't treasured the way sports cars were, nor were they weekend cars. As a result, it's hard (read: expensive) to find a collector-quality wagon. Prices on BringATrailer and CarsAndBids reflect that.
They used to be ubiquitous, suburban moms all drove them, and today it's like they never existed.
The only semi-modern options wagon I could find were Volvo, Mercedes, BMW, Audi and Acura. With essentially all being performance oriented. VW was the exception, with their smaller sport wagon.
I’m hopeful that the crossover trend will fade back into wagons. Heck, a lot of crossovers these days are essentially a wagon on a raised suspension with a big engine and AWD.
I have similar feelings about MT cars. Give me a middle of the road modern, reliable, fuel efficient MT wagon and I’ll be really happy!
Do you know what I want? A mixture between a station wagon and a Pick up Truck. I love Pick up trucks but I don't find them well suited for transporting dogs.
I guess the next best thing would be a Land Rover Defender.
This car looks intriguing but comes with a huge price tag https://ineosgrenadier.com/
But the back space connected/open with the main cabin.
But there aren't hardly even any more of those in the US market anymore. Honda Fit is no longer produced for US market, along with many of it's peers.
Ford Flex, Subaru Outback, Volvo V90, can you really look at that and call it an SUV with a straight face?