Wagon Renaissance – Truth or Fiction

A lot of folks don’t believe that there is a demand for station wagons at the moment. While I may use it a lot, I didn’t coin the term Wagon Renaissance. It’s out there folks, and for good reason.

While full sized station wagons get a pretty bad rap on styling and gas mileage, consider this: The typical full sized V8 station wagon delivers better gas mileage than most SUV’s and pickup trucks. We all know just how many of those we’re seeing on the roads. Seating capacity of many station wagons is superior to most SUV’s and is often considerably more comfortable. The ride and handling of a full-sized station wagon is generally very smooth and soft, giving that floaty “driving the living room sofa” feel to it. This is not so with the majority of SUV’s. Station wagons were designed for family road trips! They run for long periods of time due to large fuel tanks and extremely comfortable seating. Few cars these days were designed expressly for comfort. Most vehicle owners rarely drive long trips anymore and cars aren’t really optimized for that kind of driving.

Consider this as well. Even a year ago a mid 70’s station wagon put up for sale on eBay was usually due to it having been sitting for years and someone needed it gone, or an elderly couple no longer required it. There weren’t a great number of station wagons appearing up for sale and often they sat for a considerable amount of time without any bids. A search in the eBay Automotive section under “Wagons” revealed almost 1200 auctions covering the 1920’s up to currently available long-roofed cars that “technically” qualify as station wagons. eBay also lumps PT Cruisers, HHR’s, and even some Hummers in with that. If you opt to be a wagon purist, the number revealed by the search may actually be lower. For the sake of my point, I’m talking only about older wagons that have generally been considered, ugly, enormous, or otherwise undesirable. A quick prowl through the eBay results revealed around 70 station wagons dating from the 50’s up to the mid-90’s B-bodies that ALL have bids on them. See the screenshots below.

If ever you wanted to purchase a station wagon, now’s the time. Pricing on many of these cars, even those used as daily drivers, has more than doubled in the last year. Get in on the ground floor. Give a wagon a forever home today.