History of the Station Wagon
 

I am fascinated with the origins of things. I remember riding in station wagons. My wife and I had a 1990 Mercury Sable GS station wagon and I actually loved that car. It was Champagne in color with black trim, had those aluminum wheels that were also on the SHO of the day, had "ground effects" and front air dam. It also had the rear facing rear seat.


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My father had one when I was about 5 years old....it had the rear facing seat also. (I think it was a Ford)
I remember him saying how much he liked wagons because they always put the bigger motor in them.

These are the only 2 station wagons my parents ever had, late 70s in Japan and again in the mid 80s in Japan. In the US, I remember big cars, fast cars, economy cars, but never a station wagon. I'm sure I have, but I don't even remember ever riding in a station wagon. I take that back, when I was in HS a buddies older brother had a station wagon. We might have ridden in that thing once (older brothers don't drive younger brothers and their buddies around unless they have to).

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'58 Olds here. My dad's car. I would get to use it to haul my kart to the track on Sundays while he and my mother took the '57 T-Bird to play golf. It probably reeked of fuel when he took it to work on Monday. Why we had a wagon is beyond me. He wasn't thinking of me that's for sure.

We had a ‘70 Olds and a ‘74 Plymouth wagons…. Transitioned over to a custom Dodge van in 80! Many thousands of family vacation miles put on all three of those!

My mom had a '64 Chevelle 2 door wagon. Kind of a mini Nomad with sliding back windows. Just a 283 2 barrel, cloth interior, but I thought it was cool. Sadly, got stolen & trashed by a couple of punks. They got caught when they tried to sell the wheels/tires to the local wrecked-em yard.

Always liked that wagon. Nice lines. Think one would make for a good restomod project.

1968 Ford Country Squire - yellow with no fake wood.

My seat on trips was in the way back, the two seats that came out of the floor and faced each other, not the back of the wagon.

On our many trips to the Bay Area, I might as well been on Apollo 13 and the rest of family at Mission Control.

No seat belts, no air bags and a bumper rated to "parking lot", all powered by a huge motor on 60/70's tires with drum brakes. What could go wrong:D

We recently bought an Outback for Mrs. Noah. We were in the Subie dealership, talking about the various offerings in their product line when Mrs. Noah commented to the salesman about the station wagon look of the Outback.

“Oh no, no, no,” he quickly corrected her. “It’s an SUV.”

We didn’t care. We both actually like station wagons, and prefer their efficiency to the bigger SUVs and crossovers so popular today.

Ah yes the working class SUV of the 50's. Those of you familiar with my particular brand of mental "uniqueness" won't be surprised to hear that I was in the back of the family wagon crossing what is known as the Driscoll bridge over the Raritan River in the late 50's when we got rear ended. Being the 50's there were no safety devices at all and so (according to my Mom) I bounced around like a drop of water on a hot griddle. If not for the back seat I'd have landed on the dashboard.

At least I wasn't napping on the rear window shelf of a later model car. That was my kid brother's place.

First car I was allowed to drive off by myself in was a '76 Olds Vista Cruiser. Stock everything and could beat brand new Mustang 5.0s (this was mid 80s) from stop light to stop light down the main road. Of course, the gas gauge and speedometer were directly but inversely related....

Vista cruisers rock!

Good call. We currently have an Outback. Yeah, it's like an offroad station wagon more than an SUV.

Big “estate car” fan. Current daily is a W211 estate.

As with my wife's family, which also cruised around coddled in Country Squire comfort, y'all were in tall cotton compared to my family, whose funding limited us to a '65 Country Sedan with roller windows, an AM radio and no A/C.

And to keep the miles off of that fancy Ford, my Dad daily drove a `60 Studebaker Lark two-door that was, to be kind, quite the turd.

_

Wagons have always had a place in my heart.

Some of them I have owned over the years......

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Our family car in the 60's....my brother in the pic:
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Love a good wagon! this one is mine, and my 33 year old son has 3 Mercedes wagons, I guess he got that from me!

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I love wagons. I'm currently on my 4th Volvo wagon. In fact I've had at least one wagon in my fleet since the late 90s. At one point we had 2 wagons at the same time. I was driving a 240 wagon and a 911 before I was even married or had kids. I actually took a girl out in the 240 once. She was not impressed......

I've had station wagons since, umm, about the mid '80s.

Always a Toyota Corolla wagon. I'm up to number 6 or 7 now.

The latest one is definitely the best one. Very economical on gas.

Crappy photo of a photo that my Sissy sent me but, it’s my new ‘66. You can tell it’s mine by the way I’m leaning on it. Spent a lot of time up on the roof at the drive ins.

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When I was 10 to about 16 we had a Dodge Sierra wagon like the one pictured except it was all yellow. It had a 360 V-8 with a four barrel carb. Dad said it would pass anything but a gas station.
I liked to sit in the rear seat because you sat backwards. You got into the seat through the tailgate. I don't remember why (maybe it was designed that way?) but you couldn't open the tailgate from the inside.

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