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Station Wagons
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For station wagon enthusiasts!
You can also join us on discord to discuss station wagons and classic cars: https://discord.gg/MzHrYxqmjm (this discord covers multiple hobbies.)
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Buick Estate Woody Years produced: 1941-1953 Original starting price: $1,463 We aren't talking about the huge, utilitarian Buick Estate wagons of the 1960s through the 1980s, but the big-grilled, wood-bodied wagons Buick made in the 1940s and '50s. This was back when Buick wasn't just yet another GM brand that needed a wagon, but a near-autonomous badge that could offer its own engines and designs to set itself apart. Wood panels weren't built for the long haul, which makes a childhood spent in one of these worth cherishing. Good luck finding an intact model today.
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Chevrolet Lakewood Years produced: 1961-1963 Original starting price: $2,331 Do you like going really slow in a dangerous automobile? Well, this wagon version of the Chevrolet Corvair not only ran on a sluggish 80-horsepower engine, but tossed that engine in the back of the vehicle like a Volkswagen Beetle. When consumer advocate Ralph Nader's book “Unsafe at Any Speed” pointed out that the vehicle's swing axle rear suspension made the Corvair unstable, it and its counterpart wagon were doomed.
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image credit Vetatur Fumare - check out their Flickr page for more cool cars
Years produced: 1980-1988 Original starting price: $7,718 Crossover SUVs owe much to the AMC Eagle. With elevated ground clearance, a hatchback, and full-time all-wheel drive, the Eagle could have slipped into Subaru's portfolio with ease. Though unusual for its time, the Eagle set the template for the crossover SUV and made all-wheel drive a sought-after feature — and not just for off-roaders.
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image credit Josue007 Years produced: 1963-1966
Original starting price: $2,802 When you're a small automaker in Indiana with nothing to lose, putting a retractable roof over your wagon's cargo area is one way to stand out. With a General Motors V8 under the hood, the Wagonaire could lug items that would otherwise be too bulky to carry. Studebaker stopped producing cars in 1967, but the Wagonaire's spirit found its way into the GMC Envoy and its retractable roof in the early 2000s. It's also in just about every full-sized pickup today. “Full-size pickup trucks are becoming much more family-friendly vehicles,” Kaufman says. “Those are where you're seeing a ton of innovation in interior storage tricks, comfort features, and trick tailgates that could have built-in steps or multifunction tailgates.”
Check out the wikipedia page, it's written with a scottish accent.
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Years produced: 1957-1991 Original starting price: $3,677 The Colony Park was a woodgrain-paneled wagon from its start as a somewhat snazzier version of Ford's Country Squire. It was ventilated all the way to the wayback, had covered headlights, and got a driver-side airbag and three-point seatbelts throughout as the years went on.
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image credit CZmarlin
Years produced: 1948-1950 Original starting price: $3,425 This vehicle now sells for an average of $92,900 because of what it was: a wood-sided sedan that made room for eight passengers with very few modifications. The chrome, leather, wood paneling, and glass on the interior are gorgeous, but it's the steel sub frame beneath the exterior wood that made them not only more durable than their wood-paneled counterparts, but easier to restore.
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image credit That Hartford Guy
Years produced: 1971-1976 Original starting price: $4,135 The Grand Safari “clamshell” design made its way onto the biggest versions of the Chevy Kingswood, Belair, and Caprice Estates; Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser; and Buick Estate — and so did a “glide-away” tailgate that glided away only if you exerted 35 pounds of pressure to lower it. Getting it back up was no dream, either. But having a tuck-away tailgate solved a problem that even SUV and minivan liftgates haven't figured out: How to you open your cargo door in a tight space, such as a closed garage? At a time when wagon owners had smaller garages and actually had to parallel park these beasts on city streets, it was a question worth asking.
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image credit Greg Gjerdingen
Years produced: 1936-present Original starting price: $685 In the early days of the automobile, the station wagon was literally a car you took to get home from a train station, and it had a wooden box on the back to hold luggage. A “suburban” was for taking the same passengers and gear out to the homes farther from the city, and it was a wagon mounted onto a van or truck frame. Chevrolet invented several family cars in one stroke by debuting the Suburban in 1936; it's rolled into the modern day as an extended, truck-based SUV.
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Years produced: 1975-1993 Original starting price: $5,795 At this point in Volvo's history, people drove them primarily for their safety. The 200 series had huge front and rear crumple zones, three-point seatbelts everywhere, and, in the early '90s, anti-lock brakes standard. But the boxy exterior and cubic headlights, along with beveled headrests and crank-operated moon roofs, made an impression on many families and remain sought after to this day.
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Years produced: 1964-1977 Original starting price: $3,270 “Hangin' out! Down the street!” Alex Chilton and the cast of “That '70s Show” did more for the reputation of the Vista Cruiser than Oldsmobile itself. With optional rear-facing third-row seating, skylights, and a Rocket V8 engine, the Cruiser was a gem. It’s beyond us why Oldsmobile felt the need to sell it alongside at least three other wagons (a Cutlass, Custom Cruiser, and a Dynamic 88), not to mention pry out the skylights and slap on the fake wood paneling of every other wagon on the market.
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Two sources:
Years produced: 1946-1981 Original starting price: $6,525 (in 1951, first available MSRP) Powered by a four-cylinder engine, this Jeep wagon was the first all-steel wagon. Jeep actually had to use a three-tone paint job to simulate the “woody” look, and that vehicle's faux wood grain, tailgate, and vast cargo space set the tone for all wagons to come. “Chrysler's PT Cruiser offered exterior wood, but it was fake, and the Lincoln Blackwood — their ill-fated luxury truck — also had exterior wood,” Kaufman says. “At the Chicago Auto Show, to celebrate 35 years of building minivans, Chrysler did bring out a first-generation Plymouth Voyager in gold with wood paneling.” While wood grain was lovely, the four-wheel drive added in 1949 was the first hint at Jeep's SUV future.
1946-1965 WILLYS WAGON
AMERICA’S FIRST ALL-STEEL STATION WAGON America's first all-steel station wagon debuted in July 1946 as the model 463 Jeep® Station Wagon and featured a three-tone paintwork that simulated the "woodie" look. The no-maintenance all-steel utility vehicle was not prone to weathering, peeling or squeaks like the old style "woodies". The Wagon's fold-down tailgate hatch was ahead of its time and can be credited with the origin of the "tailgate party".
Most station wagons of the day could carry 4x8 feet sheets of plywood horizontally—but only Willys could store them vertically as well. A wash-out interior could be "cleaned almost as easily as a kitchen sink! “ Consumer Reports October 1950 issue stated, "The Willys Station Wagon, used as it is intended to be used, has no equal in its field… It is a working car and it does its work well.”
The Willys Wagon was also available in commercial delivery formats—Sedan Delivery, Panel Delivery, or Utility Delivery — with enclosed back sides and vertical rear doors.
When four-wheel drive was added in 1949, the Willys Wagon became the forerunner of the Grand Cherokee (WK). The Brooks Stevens designed Wagon was in productionnearly 20 years—longer than any other contemporary American automobile of its day. source
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Years produced: 1963-1977 Original starting price: $2,852 The Chevelle was the muscle car your grandmother could drive. Almost purposefully ugly and available with a big-block V8 engine, the Chevelle could haul either groceries or a load of cinder blocks and still beat sportier cars off the line. Though the wagon version was somewhat rare, it was available through the entire run and was a thrill for kids, parents, and grandparents alike.
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Years produced: 1979-1985 Original starting price: $24,569 Much of the modern wagon market is firmly in the hands of luxury brands, but a Mercedes-Benz wagon was far more of a novelty in the U.S. when this version was released. With features such as anti-lock brakes, driver airbag, power windows, and a rear-facing rear row of seats, the 300TD started its life as a Cape Cod or Hamptons car. Now considered nearly indestructible, the 300TD has strong resale value among those who remember when wagons could be status symbols.
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AMC Hornet Sportabout Years produced: 1972-1977 Original starting price: $2,587 As a station wagon version of American Motors Corp.’s best-selling car and the first U.S.-made hatchback, the Sportabout used a liftgate-style hatchback instead of swing-out or fold-down tailgate. It would set a precedent for liftgates in modern SUVs.
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Mercury Commuter Years produced: 1958-1962 Original starting price: $2,903 If you got to grow up in one of these streamlined, finned, pink or teal beauties, you grew up with an inflated expectation of what a wagon could be. A two-door wagon at a time when that just didn't happen, the Commuter gave buyers a Lincoln V8 engine at a deep discount from the Lincoln brand. It was form over function, which is why it would become a four-door everyday wagon before its demise.
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Years produced: 1978-1996 Original starting price: $5,447 The Cutlass was introduced as a compact car, but had a wagon variant and edged its way slowly into family-car territory. Though the Vista Cruiser packed a V8 engine in certain models, the Cutlass Cruiser wagon was the first to take on the iconic grocery-getter look. The long Cutlasses of the 1970s and the shorter, more utilitarian Cutlass family of Cieras, Supremes, and Calaises would make the Cutlass a fixture in family driveways.
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Chevrolet Nomad Years produced: 1955-1972 Original starting price: $2,571 The Nomad was outright sassy for a wagon: Two doors, a sleek roofline, and fins kicked off the series, though it became more utilitarian as the years went on. Though the Nomad name was slapped onto some ugly wagons and even a van in the '60s and '70s, the '50s models were absolutely gorgeous.
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Years produced: 1950-1991 Original starting price: $2,253 It had wood doors and side panels when it was introduced. Its “magic doorgate” flipped down like a truck tailgate or swung open like a door. At 19 feet long and powered by V8 engines, the Country Squire was huge and sold hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year. But kids of its era are more likely to remember it for side-facing seats, a magnetic checkerboard, optional CB radio, and hidden rear cargo compartment. This is the wagon that introduced kids to “the wayback.”
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Years produced: 1956-1991 Original starting price: $3,140 This wasn't a car of its own, but Pontiac's designation for each of its wagons. The Star Chief, Astre, Bonneville, Catalina, Executive, Grand Ville, LeMans, Parisienne, 6000, Sunbird, and Tempest all got the Safari tag as wagons, but the Grand Safari built on the Bonneville and Grand Ville body was the most impressive — more than 19 feet long, with 5.5 feet of interior space from side to side, and weighing nearly 5,300 pounds at its peak, which would become its greatest drawback. “One of the bigger issues the wagon has versus the SUV is that when you get the passengers all sitting upright, you can shift the way things are arranged and fit a lot of cargo space in a relatively small footprint,” Kaufman says. “Wagons are usually longer vehicles, so people who live in cities will take up a smaller footprint with a small SUV.”
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Years produced: 1965-1976 Original starting price: $2,650 The Coronet, as a family sedan and wagon with brawny V8 engines — including a 7-liter Hemi and a 7.2-liter, 440-cubic-inch Magnum — was rolling hubris, built on the belief that even families deserved some muscle under the hood. Buyers approved, and none of Dodge's other muscle cars matched the sales of this beast. Its final post-oil-crisis incarnations, though, were as wood-paneled wagons and oversized, overpowered sedans.
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Years produced: 1941-2016 Original starting price: $2,950 Before automakers covered their station wagons in fake wood paneling, Chrysler had the first real “woodie,” with actual wooden doors and side panels. The Town & Country had evolved into a chromed-out wagon with tailgate and rear washer — and nearly 19 feet of length — by 1968 and got some fake wood paneling in the 1970s (also on its smaller “K-car” in the '80s). By 1990, however, it was a wood-paneled minivan, following families from one iconic vehicle to the next.
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