Click here to subscribe today or Login.
Ah, glorious summer! Time to pack up the old station wagon and…
Wait a minute. Where do you find a true station wagon these days?
Oh, of course some car makers will sell you something called a “wagon,” but they’re not the same kind of vehicles our grandparents knew and loved, and that some of us recall with great fondness.
No, the all-American station wagon has vanished. We can pile the family and its gear into the minivan or the SUV or the hefty sedan. But the traditional wagon with its unique ethos is no more.
Big and bold station wagons were the flagships of the highway in the post-World War II days of affluence and optimism. Now they’re antique-car show curiosities, parked next to the runabout that might have carried fur-coated collegians to the Princeton game.
My dad owned two wagons. One was a genuine old “woodie,” a 1947 Ford with a glossy wooden shell atop the metal frame. The disadvantage, of course, was that in a damp climate the wood rotted away. But at least it had that all-important third seat.
The other, a 1952 Plymouth, was a harbinger of sad things to come: just two rows of seats, the rear being nothing but a trunk with windows. I’ve owned two wagons myself, but more like that Plymouth than the Ford.
The defining characteristic of the all-American station wagon was that third seat. There was a front bench seat holding three people (picture that today), with a shorter middle seat that held two passengers and that partly folded back to allow access to the rear, which held another bench seat for three people.
Kids always considered it fun to sit in that rear seat, but for adults it was a test of agility and pain tolerance. You could easily bump your head or bang your knee crawling into the rear. Once in there, you’d settle in with your two fellow passengers, all of you finding your legs up around your chest, because the floor back there was so high.
Getting out meant that you had to unlimber your stiff body, the right-side passenger first, and back out of the wagon through the right-rear door, leading with your rear end and feeling with your right foot for something not too squishy to step on.
Why did anybody buy a wagon? In a word, practicality. In those baby boom days, you could put eight people into a station wagon (can’t do that today in your $40,000 SUV). Or, fold down the rear seat and you could haul furniture or lumber for the house you bought with a GI loan.
I’ve always harbored a sneaky suspicion, though, that a wagon simply boasted more panache than a sedan. Rich people in the movies always seemed to have big wagons on the grand driveways in front of their mansions to haul sportily dressed guests from the train station. A Freudian might say I really bought two of them so I could fantasize saying “Jeeves, bring in the Montmorencys’ luggage from the wagon.”
Sad to say, the true station wagon has gone the way of some other once-popular types of motor vehicles. Remember the business coupe? It was a two-seater car with an enormous extended trunk designed to carry a traveling salesman’s sample cases. No more!
So I haunt the antique car shows. Hey, nobody ever died from the leg cramps he got in that third seat.