The Wagon Whose Station Cannot be Named
All hail the station wagon’s return to the game
I own a ridiculous number of old cars, and I test new ones almost every day of the year. So I don't really ever need to buy a new car. But I think about buying new cars almost always. That's one of the reasons I am qualified to write about them. Even if I only get around to actually buying new cars once in a blue moon, I have strong opinions in this area and consider myself party to many car sales, as an influencer not just of readers but of friends, relations, and pretty much anyone who will listen while I bore on.
So, as I was saying.
For me, perhaps the most exciting part of the 2018 sales season is the return of the station wagon. Of course, this is more of a micro trend than a full-blown renaissance. It is not even arriving through the front door—where I believe this supremely practical genus of vehicle would receive the hale and hearty greeting it deserves—but rather through the tradesman's entrance. Indeed, there's sort of an embarrassed, under-the-radar quality to the launch of the new wagons that have most piqued interest lately: Buick's Regal TourX and Volvo's V90.
These newcomers join a slender roster of wagons already on sale, reflecting an industry intent on resisting the notion that there exists a segment of the population that willingly accepts the good sense of the wagon format and is prepared to pay for it. There are plenty of other people who think they want SUVs or crossovers who might be persuaded to buy wagons, the way people here used to and still do in Europe, if anyone cared to sell them.
The industry's anti-wagon prejudice emerged over the last few decades as carmakers established an SUV profit paradigm: adding height seemingly elevates the price people are prepared to pay for cars. But if this is so, it is the industry's own fault. Much the same way they spent decades selling tailfins and chrome, carmakers have conditioned customers, rele-gating us to the unnecessary weight, height, and uniformly boring styling that define the SUV and crossover genera. Whatever the industry says about listening to the customer, people mostly buy what they're told to buy.
This wagon deficit is, then, why I celebrate the Jaguar XF Sportbrake and the new generation of Mercedes E-Class wagons while decrying the absence from the U.S. market of the latest C-Class shooting brake. We com-mend BMW for continuing to bring us its fine 3 Series wagon but curse it for reducing choices by refusing to supply our fruited plains with the larger 5 Series hauler anymore. Sorry, but between a 540i wagon and an X5 SUV only one can be an ultimate driving machine, and X doesn't mark that spot. For its part, Audi won't sell us its A4 wagon in undiluted form at all, only with a lift kit and a body-cladding upcharge. They call it the Allroad, which is good because I am quite certain it is going to be driven exclusively on pavement.
