Subaru began selling four-wheel-drive-equipped Leone station wagons in the United States as 1975 models, and each passing year after that saw more American car shoppers deciding that they wanted cars—not trucks, cars—with power going to all four wheels. Toyota got into that game with the Tercel 4WD wagon, sold here for the 1983 through 1988 model years, and I’ve found one of those cars in its final parking space in Denver.

The very affordable Tercel first went on sale in the United States as a 1980 model, badged as the Corolla Tercel at first (in order to take advantage of the name recognition for the unrelated Corolla, which had been a strong seller since its American debut in 1966).

The original Tercel had an interesting powertrain layout, with a longitudinally-mounted engine driving the front wheels via a V-drive-style transmission that sent power to a differential assembly mounted below the engine. This resulted in an awkward-looking high hood but also meant that sending power to a rear drive axle was just a matter of adding a rear-facing output shaft to the transmission.

Making a four-wheel-drive Tercel wasn’t difficult with that rig plus a few off-the-shelf parts, and Toyota decided to add a wagon version of the Tercel at the same time. This was the Sprinter Carib, which debuted in Japan as a 1982 model. The Tercel 4WD Wagon (as it was known in North America) hit American Toyota showrooms as a 1983 model.

A front-wheel-drive version of the Tercel Wagon was also available in the United States, though not in Japan; most of the Tercel Wagons I find during my junkyard travels are four-wheel-drive versions.

This car has four-wheel-drive, not all-wheel-drive (as we understand the terms today), which means that the driver had to manually select front-wheel-drive for use on dry pavement. Failure to do so would result in damage to the tires or worse. American Motors began selling the all-wheel-drive Eagle as a 1980 model, with Audi following a year later with its Quattro AWD system, while Toyota didn’t begin selling true AWD cars in the United States until its All-Trac system debuted in the 1988 model year.

The Tercel 4WD Wagon sold very well in snowy regions of North America, despite strong competition from Subaru as well as from the 4WD-equipped wagons offered by Honda, Nissan, and Mitsubishi.

This one is a top-of-the-Tercel-range SR5 model with just about every possible option. While the base 1986 Tercel FWD hatchback started at a miserly $5448 ($15,586 in today’s dollars), the MSRP for a 1986 Tercel SR5 4WD wagon was $8898 ($25,456 after inflation).

One of the coolest features of the SR5 version of the ’86 Tercel 4WD Wagon was the six-speed manual transmission, with its “Extra Low” gear. If you’re a Tercel 4WD Wagon enthusiast (many are), this is the transmission you want for your car!

The SR5’s plaid seat upholstery looked great, as an added bonus.

These cars were reasonably capable off-road, though the lack of power made them quite slow on any surface. This is a 1.5-liter 3A-C SOHC straight-four, rated at 62 horsepower and 76 pound-feet (probably more like 55 horsepower at Denver’s elevation).

The curb weight of this car was a wispy 2290 pounds and so it wasn’t nearly as pokey as, say, a Rabbit Diesel, but I’ve owned several 1983-1988 Tercel Wagons and I can say from personal experience that they require a great deal of patience on freeway on-ramps.

I can also say from experience that the Tercel Wagon obliterates every one of its anywhere-near-similarly-priced competitors in the reliability and build-quality departments. This one made it to a pretty good 232,503 miles during its career, and I’ve found a junkyard ’88 with well over 400,000 miles on its odometer.

The air conditioning added $655 to the price tag, or $1874 in today’s dollars. This one has an aftermarket radio, but SR5 4WD Wagon buyers for 1986 got a pretty decent AM/FM radio with four speakers as standard equipment. If you wanted to play cassettes, that was $186 more ($532 now).

The Tercel went to a third generation during the 1988 model year (both the second- and third-generation Tercels were sold in the United States as 1988 models), becoming a cousin of the Japanese-market Starlet and getting an ordinary engine orientation in the process. The 4WD Wagon went away, to be replaced by the Corolla All-Trac Wagon. The 1996 Tercel ended up being the last new car available in the United States with a four-speed manual transmission, by the way.

These cars make fun projects today, though finding rust-free examples can be a challenge.

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In Colorado, where I live, four-wheel-drive Subarus have been beloved ever since the first 4WD Leone-based models appeared in showrooms in the mid-’70s. Because of their popularity in the Centennial State for nearly 50 years, the car graveyards along the I-25 corridor amount to museums of the history of the Pleiades-badged brand in America. Today we’ll take a look at an absolutely loaded Subaru wagon, found in a boneyard just outside of Denver.

When we talk about U.S.-market Subarus of the 1970s and 1980s, we need to first discuss the way that Fuji Heavy Industries named their cars on this side of the Pacific. The Leone, as it was known in Pacific markets, debuted in the United States as a 1972 model, but that name was never used here. At first, they were designated by their engine displacements, but soon each model was pitched as, simply, “the Subaru” with the trim levels (DL and GL were the best-known) used as de facto model names. The exception to this system was the Brat pickup, which first showed up as a 1978 model. Things in the American Subaru naming world became even more confusing when the non-Leone-derived XT appeared as a 1985 model followed by the Justy two years later, and the Leone finally became the Loyale here for its final years (1990-1994).

The Leone began its American career as a seriously cheap economy car, mocked in popular culture for its small size (but still getting a shout-out from Debbie Harry). Sponsorship of the U.S. Olympic Ski Team and gradual addition of size and features allowed Subaru to sell the higher-end Leone models for decent money as the 1980s went on.

In 1987, the absolute cheapest member of the Leone family in the United States was the base front-wheel-drive three-door-hatchback, coming in at an MSRP of $5857 (about $16,345 in 2024 dollars). Known to Subaru dealers as the STD, it was disappointingly never badged as such.

At the very top of the 1987 U.S.-market Leone ziggurat stood today’s Final Parking Space subject: the GL-10 Turbo 4WD Wagon. Its price started at an impressive $14,688, which comes to a cool $40,990 after inflation. A naturally-aspirated 1987 GL 4WD Wagon could be had for $10,767 ($30,047 in today’s money). In fact, the only way to spend more on a new 1987 Subaru (before options) was to forget about the Leone and buy an XT GL-10 Turbo 4WD at $15,648 ($43,669 now).

There weren’t many options you’d need on the feature-stuffed GL-10, but this car’s original buyer decided it was worth paying an additional $955 ($2665 in today’s bucks) for the automatic transmission. That pushed its out-the-door cost to within spitting distance of the price of admission for a new Volkswagen Quantum Syncro Wagon and its $17,320 ($48,335 in 2024) price.

Subaru was an early adopter of turbocharging for U.S.-market cars, with the first turbocharged Leone coupes and wagons appearing here in 1983. This car has a 1.8-liter SOHC boxer-four rated at 115 horsepower and 134 pound-feet, pretty good power in its time for a vehicle that scaled in at just 2,530 pounds (that’s about 700 fewer pounds than a new Impreza hatchback, to give you a sense of how much bulkier the current crop of new “small” cars is).

Subaru was just in the process of introducing a true all-wheel-drive system as we understand the term today in its U.S.-market vehicles when this car was built, and both 4WD and AWD systems were installed in Subarus sold here from the 1987 through 1994 model years. (Beginning with the 1996 model year, all new Subarus sold in the United States were equipped with AWD.) Subaru fudged the definition on its badging for a while by using a character that could be read as either a 4 or an A, as seen in the photo above.

I’ve documented a discarded 1987 GL-10 Turbo 4WD Coupe that had genuine AWD (called “full-time four-wheel-drive” by Subaru and some other manufacturers at the time), and it had prominent “FULL-TIME 4WD” badging and a differential-lock switch. This car just has the 4WD switch on the gearshift lever, like earlier 4WD Subarus with automatics, so I am reasonably sure that it has a 4WD system that requires the driver to switch to front-wheel-drive on dry pavement in order to avoid damage to tires or worse. But even as the current owner of two Subarus and a longtime chronicler of junked Fuji Heavy Equipment hardware, I cannot say for certain about the weird 1987 model year. Please help us out in the comments if you know for sure!

This car has the sort of science-fiction-grade digital dash that was so popular among manufacturers (particularly Japanese ones) during the middle 1980s.

It also has what a 1987 car shopper would have considered a serious factory audio system, with cassette track detection and a trip computer thrown in for good measure. This stuff was standard on the GL-10 that year, and you needed that righteous radio to fully appreciate the popular music of the time.

The odometer shows just over 120,000 miles, and the interior wasn’t too thrashed, so why was one of the coolest Subaru wagons of the 1980s residing in this place? First of all, there’s a glut of project Leones available in Colorado’s Front Range at any given moment. Second, all of the most devoted enthusiasts of these cars in this region already have hoards stables of a dozen with no space for more; I let my many friends who love these cars know about this one and they plucked at least a few parts from it before it got crushed (sorry, I shot these photos last summer and this car has already had its date with the crusher).

So, if you’re a vintage Subaru aficionado living where the Rust Monster stands 100 feet tall, head to the region between Cheyenne and Colorado Springs and find yourself a project Leone to bring home. We’ve got plenty here!

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Ordinarily I’d hesitate to ask anyone to set their mental clock back to 2020, but the latest news from Audi calls for an exception. That year wasn’t all bad—maybe you remember the colorful Audi RS 6 GTO concept, inspired by the 1989 Audi 90 Quattro IMSA GTO race car. To celebrate the 40th anniversary of quattro GmbH (known today as the performance arm Audi Sport), Audi will produce a highly limited edition of the 2025 RS 6 Avant, dubbed the RS 6 Avant GT, complete with the concept car’s rowdy IMSA GTO-esque aesthetics and a few performance tweaks.

And we do mean a few: Sorry “from our side,” race fans, no roll cages or side-exit exhausts permitted on the production line.

But first, how limited, you ask? A mere 660 examples of the RS 6 Avant GT will roll off the production line at Audi’s Böllinger Höfe plant, also home of the e-tron GT and now-departed R8 supercar. RS 6 Avants destined to become GTs are partially hand-assembled; they leave Audi’s nearby Neckarsulm plant and are then transported to Böllinger Höfe for completion by a special seven-person team (plus one logistician). The United States will receive 85 of these cars, while only seven will go to Canada. Audi very much considers the RS 6 Avant GT a “future collectible,” according to the product briefing we attended. So, let’s explore what this German swag wagon brings to the table beyond a standard RS 6 Avant.

It must be said: “Standard” seems a rather underwhelming descriptor for the RS 6 Avant Performance on which this new GT model is based. As the most powerful Audi road car ever built, the Performance model packs 621 hp and 627 lb-ft of torque from its twin-turbo, 4.0-liter V-8 engine, routing that Teutonic terror to all four wheels via an eight-speed automatic transmission and a torque-vectoring electronic limited-slip rear differential. While the powertrain is unchanged for the GT, the rear differential has unique software parameters for the control unit that—particularly while the car is in Dynamic mode—”focus on greater ability and rear bias.” The RS 6 Avant’s carbon-ceramic brake system also comes standard. Top speed is limited to 190 mph and the 0–60 mph sprint remains unchanged at 3.3 seconds.

The main hardware bit distinguishing the RS 6 Avant GT is its three-way, manually adjustable coilover damper setup. Sitting 10 mm (0.39 inches) lower than the RS 6 Avant Performance with RS sport Dynamic Ride Control (adaptive suspension), the GT comes with a toolkit and instructions for optimal settings (suited to street or track use, for example). Audi said in its briefing that customers can perform this job easily at home provided they have a lift; otherwise, it’s a dealer or independent shop job. Other suspension changes include stiffer stabilizer bars: 30 percent stiffer up front and 80 percent stiffer at the rear.

Customers can, if they choose, order their RS 6 Avant GT without the manually adjustable suspension. In those cases, the alternative is Audi’s RS sport air suspension—an optional extra offered on the standard RS 6 Avant Performance.

As befitting of any limited-edition, the RS 6 Avant GT sports a fair bit of carbon fiber: hood, front fenders, and side mirror caps. The hood features exposed carbon elements, and inside the fenders are new vents positioned behind the front wheels for increased brake cooling. The front end is an all-new design featuring a prominent chin spoiler and wider air intakes. Out back is a new roof-mounted spoiler whose vertical elements match the redesigned diffuser under the rear bumper.

U.S.-bound RS 6 Avant GTs will get fewer options than those destined for Europe and other worldwide markets. All U.S. models will come with a panoramic sunroof but no roof rails, as well as a single exterior color scheme: an Arkona White paint finish combined with a black, gray, and red wrap to evoke the Audi 90 IMSA GTO car. New six-spoke wheels, sized 22 inches, come exclusively in high-gloss white for U.S. models. American customers will also make do without the Euro market’s racing-inspired bucket seats and their carbon-fiber backing, though our RS 6 Avant GT will get a similar appearance and materials for the interior—red and copper seat stitching, plus an extended Dinamica microfiber treatment to cover the armrests, dashboard, center console, and door waist rails. Other markets will get a wider variety of exterior choices, including one of three wrap schemes and several solid colors. All examples will come with a serialized number plate in front of the center armrest.

At the briefing, Audi refused to confirm whether an RS 7 GT was in the pipeline, but representatives also didn’t rule it out. Given that this limited-edition RS 6 Avant will likely sell out and generate a tidy profit on a car that launched four years ago, we’d expect any savvy product planner to bang the drum again if given the chance. I last drove the RS 7 about two years ago; it’s a ruthlessly capable but not especially feedback-rich autobahn missile. The upgrades articulated on the RS 6 Avant GT are relatively minor, in the grand scheme, and I have a hard time imagining a the average RS 6 Avant owner will miss out on much other than collectibility and street cred. If the changes described are going to be noticed anywhere, they would be most evident on a race track. I offer a generous hat tip to any RS 6 Avant owner who tracks their car and a deep bow to any future GT owner who does so.

Audi will begin deliveries of the 2025 RS 6 Avant GT in the second quarter of 2025. No word yet on pricing, but for context, the 2024 RS 6 Avant starts at $126,895. We’d expect a decent chunk more, not just for the added performance but also the exclusivity and special build process.

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Since 2018, when Jake Whitman bought the 1955 Ford Country Squire that had been in my family for decades, he’s not only improved it both cosmetically and mechanically, he’s also used it. Last week, Whitman and the Ford joined three other vintage station wagons in Jackson, Wyoming, and headed east as part of a celebration of the American road trip organized by America’s Automotive Trust, a nonprofit that seeks to preserve and promote our automotive heritage. The entourage pulled into Detroit at the opening of the 2023 North American International Auto Show, where the wagons, replete with road grime, are on display.

Whitman invited me to drive a leg of the trip, so I met the Country Squire as it drove off the Lake Michigan ferry in Muskegon, Michigan. Seeing the car for the first time in five years, I felt some nostalgia, sure—my kids had a lot of fun in it—but the old Ford mostly reminded me of my father.

Back in 2002, my dad died, unexpectedly, just before my first kid was born. Fast forward past a lot of diaper changes and the arrival of our second kid to 2006. My unresolved feelings about my old man drove me to spend a good chunk of that year searching for the Country Squire and then convincing its owner to sell. My dad and I weren’t on good terms in the later stages of his life. He was always distant and remote, maybe depressed, and unable to reciprocate when I tried to connect. The only thing he coveted was that Country Squire, which my great uncle had used as a delivery van for his New Jersey chicken farm. In 1970, he passed it along to my dad, who drove it to the bus station and on weekend adventures. We went fishing with the Ford.

By the mid-Eighties, when I was in high school, the tired wagon was permanently parked in our two-car garage. In hindsight, I can see that the Ford’s retreat coincided with my father’s. I tried to coax him into a joint restoration effort with junkyard parts I’d give him for birthdays and holidays, but he could never summon the energy to get started. The stress of providing for his family had taken the life out of him. The parts were placed in the wagon and never touched. When Dad needed money in 1993, he reluctantly sold the Squire.

In an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, Bruce Springsteen joked that most of rock music is a cry of someone going, “Wahhh, Daddy.” I certainly felt that as my own family grew and then one day, for reasons unknown, I thought of the Squire. When it arrived at my home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the paint and chrome had been redone, but the interior was still original. The sweat stains on the driver’s-door armrest were still there, as was the musty and soothing aroma.

I was on to something by buying the Ford. My next impulse was to drive it to the places my dad had lived and spent time and talk to those who knew him. I had something to work out, something to put behind me, but I didn’t yet know what that was. Maybe I was just scared that what happened to my dad and I would happen to me and my kids, too.

I learned that one day when he was seven, in Rochester, New York, where Dad grew up, he came home to find that his own father had simply split and was never heard from again. That sounds cruel and it was, but my grandfather had it even worse: He came home from school to find his father gone, too—only that dude, my paternal great-grandfather, was in the basement, swinging from a rope. My father had his demons.

Yet the journey was far more positive than negative and provided reminders of day trips taken in the Ford and ice cream spilled on the seats. Lots of fun stories resurfaced only after family and friends saw the green Squire. Following the drive, I compiled the experience into a book that my wife read and then gently asked, “So this is just for you, right?” Looking back, it’s cringeworthy, but the whole experience was cathartic. The Country Squire had done its job. Once I realized my kids had no interest in it, I sold it to free up resources for other things.

That’s where Jake Whitman came into the picture in 2018 and how I found myself meeting up with The Drive Home rally earlier this week (Hemmings ran a diary of the trip you can read here). When I slid behind the wheel of the Country Squire, the smell of the cabin took me back to the hot and sweaty days of the summer I drove to Rochester. I noticed that the pen marks my daughter left above the glovebox were still there.

The Drive Home promotes automotive heritage yet also, America’s Automotive Trust says, looks toward the future. These old cars certainly connect us to the past, but sometimes, as in my case, they can make for a better future, too. I was happy to revisit the Ford, like one might a parent’s house, but happy to say goodbye, too, especially since it was obvious that Whitman is an ideal caretaker. I often say that I do not understand my strong connection to cars. I remain grateful, however, for that unexplainable bond and for the people that come with it.

Speaking of fine folks who share our passion, tomorrow, September 16, I’m going to Milan Dragway to see Redline Rebuild host Davin Reckow run his dragster. Reckow and crew just released a video that documents the return of the restored vintage dirt car to the original owner’s family. The four-year project was initiated when Tom Cotter, the host of our Barn Find Hunter series, found the car during one of explorations. Cotter was naturally in attendance and said, “Cars are a catalyst to bring amazing human interest stories together.”  I could not agree more.

Come join us at Milan. Otherwise, have a great weekend!

P.S.: Your feedback is very welcome. Comment below!

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The post Never Stop Driving #66: Reconnecting with an old friend on The Drive Home appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Facebook Marketplace is a pretty amazing place, isn’t it? It has such a big draw that younger folks who don’t use Facebook might still get a Marketplace ad from a friend: The Meta buy/sell platform has surpassed Craigslist for good reason. Marketplace advertisements are easy to share, especially within the Facebook universe. Here’s one that I got from my fellow earth-toned evangelists at the Brown Car Appreciation Society.

You should join this society if you like brown cars, obviously, and my dad jokes. Just kidding, I rarely make such jokes; I am a serious automotive journalist. (Any member of Hagerty Media that suggests otherwise should be ashamed of themselves.)

And this 1983 Ford F-150 is no punchline. This example of automotive joinery replaced every bit of sheetmetal that left the assembly line with a functional wooden design element. The only exterior bits that aren’t wood are the windows, lights, the factory Ford wheel covers, and the tin roof.

The ad states this used to be is a long-wheelbase Ford truck, and the sheer volume of wood needed to enclose it proves the point. But it is no longer a truck; it is more of a homage to wood-paneled wagons of yesteryear, with a drop tail that looks easy to hop on and go for a ride. The inside looks like a better place to travel: Considering the size of the doors and the rear compartment, it must have a spacious cabin.

The interior joinery doesn’t disappoint. The seller did an admirable job framing the factory gauge cluster, and building the dashboard around it. The 1990s-era Ford digital stereo is a surprise dash (sorry) of modernity, as is the functionality that comes from adding an RV-style side window into the roof. The rear seat suggests this used to be an F-150 Super Cab, and the body appears to taper to match the width of that seat.

Judging by the condition of the interior bits that survived the transformation from truck to woody wagon, I reckon this F-150 happily lived on this property until a tree fell on it. Not wanting to send a perfectly good vehicle to the scrapper, why not combine truck and tree into a reincarnated vehicle?

Of course, that’s just my guess. If you have $5000 and can make the journey to Bivins, TX, you can get the full scoop for yourself. The seller admits they are open to offers and have the title in hand. The vehicle also runs and drives, though its legality might come into question like a certain police interceptor we recently discussed. But this woody is certainly an interesting machine for a large farm or ranch, where private land grants you the freedom to you do whatever you please. On that note, it’s good to remember these words from the seller, “Yes, I built this myself.”

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Next Porsche 911 GT2 RS will be a 700-hp hybrid: Report

Intake: In typical style, Porsche is saving the best for last; the final iteration of the 992-generation 911 will be the most powerful ever made. According to Autocar the GT2 RS will arrive in 2026 with a new hybrid powertrain that uses technology from the German firm’s 963 LMDh endurance race car. It will be a mild hybrid, says Autocar, with an electric motor boosting the turbocharged 3.8-liter flat-six engine to more than 700 horsepower. The system is focused on “performance enhancement with an absolute minimum increase in weight” and will use a 400-volt electrical system which is lighter than the 800 V setup used in the Taycan and the upcoming Boxster/Cayman and Macan EVs. Battery charging would come via regenerative braking and from the turbocharger, and this electrical energy would then be deployed to boost acceleration. The battery is also said to be mounted behind the seats to maintain the 911’s rear weight bias.

Exhaust: If the 911 has to be electrified then this sounds like the way to do it. Porsche reckons the weight penalty will only be around 220 pounds with a Weissach Package featuring carbon for the roof, frunk lid, rear wing and mirrors, and that will be more than compensated for by the increase in power. We can also expect the hybrid tech to trickle down into the rest of the 911 range before the decade is out. —Nik Berg

BMW executive hints at M5 wagon for America

Intake: At The Amelia this past weekend, we had dinner with a number of BMW executives, including Head of Product Communications Ingo Wirth. Though these suit-and-tie types are rarely willing to let slip anything about future product, we nonetheless probed about recent reports of a wagon version in the pipeline for the next-generation BMW M5. When asked if such a vehicle could make it to North America, Wirth turned to us, raised an eyebrow, and said, “You never know.”

Exhaust: In these situations, the answer one normally receives is “we do not comment on future product,” delivered in robotic corporate monotone. A specious “you never know,” is about as close to a real response as an executive can give without outright blabbing. According to veteran journalist Georg Kacher, the upcoming M5 wagon (codenamed G99), will pack the 735-hp/735-lb-ft plug-in hybrid powertrain from the XM. It’s rumored to go into production in late 2024, but even if an M5 wagon happens there is a chance it won’t ultimately come to America to do battle with the Audi RS 6 Avant and Mercedes-AMG E 63. BMW, after all, opted not to bring the new M3 wagon to our shores. —Eric Weiner

Tesla whacks prices of S and X models

Intake: Tesla cut prices of its Model S sedan and Model X crossover  Sunday by $5,000 and $10,000 respectively ‘as the company seeks to goose demand in the final month of the quarter,” says Automotive News. The Model S dual-motor is now $89,990, down 5.2 percent from $94,990, according to the company’s website. The Model S Plaid is now $109,990, down 4.3 percent from $114,990. The Model X all-wheel drive is now $99,990, down 9.1 percent from $109,990. The Model X Plaid is now $109,990, down 8.3 percent from $119,990. “Tesla sells its cars direct to consumers and often tweaks its pricing. The latest moves come even though Tesla drastically cut prices in January in a broad bid to boost sales,” Automotive News says.

Exhaust: Tesla is clearly feeling some pressure from other manufacturers. Will there be another price drop, or is this the optimum time to buy a Tesla? Your guess is as good as ours is. —Steven Cole Smith

Ford patents technology that would allow cars to repossess themselves

Intake: “Imagine it’s the near future,” says NPR, and “you’ve bought a new car with a self-driving mode. But hard times hit and you fall behind on loan payments. Then, one day you find your car has driven itself away to the repossession lot.” That’s the vision of a new Ford patent published last month that describes a variety of futuristic ways that Ford vehicle systems could be controlled by a financial institution in order to aid in the repossession of a car. That said, the company told NPR that Ford has no intention of implementing the ideas in the patent, which is one among hundreds of pending Ford patents published this year by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. “We don’t have any plans to deploy this,” said Wes Sherwood, Ford spokesperson. “We submit patents on new inventions as a normal course of business but they aren’t necessarily an indication of new business or product plans.”

Exhaust: In the new world of 84-month, and even 96-month new-car payments, dealers tell us that more repossessions are definitely in the future. Seem like Ford is thinking ahead, despite shuttering its Argo AI autonomy division late last year. —SCS

Only 10 new cars under $25,000?

Intake: At the end of 2017, there were three dozen models with manufacturer-suggested retail prices (MSRPs) typically below $25,000, according to a report from Cox Automotive, a research and consulting firm. Fast forward five years and only 10 remain, according to Money. The average price of a new car is now close to $50,000, up from about $36,000 in 2017, according to Kelley Blue Book. The prices used are not the bare MSRP, but the price of the average sale. They are:

• Chevrolet Spark: $17,244
• Kia Rio: $18,962
• Mitsubishi Mirage: $19,300
• Hyundai Accent: $19,503
• Nissan Versa: $20,262
• Kia Forte: $23,005
• Kia Soul: $23,349
• Hyundai Venue: $23,714
• Nissan Sentra: $24,098
• Toyota Corolla: $24,978

Exhaust: As mentioned, Money points out that the MSRPs in this list are the average sticker prices of the vehicles that were sold in December, meaning they’re the typical prices when factoring in trim and option packages. This is not a list of starting MSRPs, which would be lower. Few people buy the absolute stripper models, assuming you can even find them on a dealer’s lot. —SCS

Ford boosting production of electric vehicles

Intake: The manufacturer is increasing production of the electric Mach-E and F-150 Lightning “to meet strong customer demand. “We have had a strong start to 2023 sales and we are moving to fast-track quality production,” said Kumar Galhotra, president, Ford Blue. “Increasing production benefits both our customers and our business.”

Ford began increasing production of the Mustang Mach-E this week. Changes at the plant will allow Ford to nearly double its hourly production and bring its annual manufacturing run rate to a targeted 210,000 units by year’s end. In Michigan, production of the F-150 Lightning at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center is on track to triple this year, targeting an annual production run rate of 150,000 by the end of 2023. The F-150 Lightning, the best-selling electric truck in the U.S., had sales of 3600 through February, in addition to the 15,617 sales recorded in 2022. F-150 Lightning production will resume March 13 after a battery fire halted the assembly line. Overall, for the F-150 Lightning production increase, Ford is investing $2 billion across three plants in Michigan and adding 3200 union jobs.

Exhaust: Of all the U.S. manufacturers, Ford was arguably the first to genuinely embrace EVs, and the reward has been strong sales. Ford was number two in U.S. EV sales in 2022, behind Tesla, and is bringing new customers to the brand: more than two-thirds of customers come from other makes. —SCS

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Welcome to a regular feature we call In the Moment!

A while back, Hagerty’s editor-at-large, Sam Smith, began kicking off our mornings by plopping a random archive photo into our staff chat room. His descriptions of those photos were fun, so we began running them as irregular columns.

These days, Sam writes ITMs specifically for publication. Often while drinking too much coffee and going rhetorical walkabout. Enjoy, and let us know what you think in the comments! —Ed.

***

The Volvo 850 estate,” he said, was “ . . . the largest car in the series.”

That’s Rickard Rydell, a Swede, a Volvo factory touring-car driver from 1994 to 1998. The line is the kind of dry, accurate statement often seen in carmaker press releases. Naturally, a press release is where I found it.

That release was issued nine years ago, on the 20th anniversary of the arrival of the Volvo 850 wagon in the British Touring Car Championship.

A racing wagon! 

A Volvo!

How unlikely and marvelous!

Witness, once more, the unlikely marvelous!

This column often zooms in on historic photos for reasons of emphasis or detail. We should zoom in.

What’s that, you say? Just some racey wagon? Why the hubbub?

You say you don’t . . . want . . . to zoom in? 

Would a taste help? A photographic amuse-bouche?

Or maybe this one? 

Still no? 

No matter. I run this page, see? We shall zoom again soon! If you don’t understand why, feel free to click the window closed and look at something else. Anything. Five facts about ponies. The Mustard video on Ekranoplans. This brake caliper I just bought for my 200,000-mile German daily driver, a component that, while reasonably priced, made me sigh and remember how much I miss my old Chevy K1500 pickup.

Not least because reman pad-grabbers for that old horse were a whopping $19.95 from RockAuto, absent that site’s mandatory five-dollar core and infamous $400-per-pound shipping.

Did the boring folks leave? Good. 

Those of you that remain presumably do so for one of three reasons:

1. You are genuinely curious about that racing wagon

2. The stream-of-consciousness writing style deployed in these columns hits something like a car crash, and you’re unable to look away

3. WHEELS UP, YOU SONSAMONKEYS, HERE’S THAT SWEET-HOT ZOOM!

 

(Please continue reading, and do not leave for facts about ponies. We apologize for Sam. We’ve asked him to stop this kind of thing, but he won’t. —Ed.)

Forgive the dramatics. Volvos can evoke strong emotion, flying Volvos moreso.

At the risk of stating the obvious, we are each built of our history. When I was in high school, in the late 1990s, I had two friends with Volvo 740s. Then as now, those cars were not particularly desirable, merely old and cheap.

Like the BMW E23 7-series or the Volkswagen Phaeton, the 740 seems destined to live in the shadow of its smaller siblings. The E23 is perpetually overshadowed by the contemporary 3-series, the E30; Phaetons are generally ignored in favor of the VW Golf. When it comes to Volvos, most people prefer the smaller and less cushy 240 models.

This makes sense. The 240 was built from 1974 to 1993, yet its quirk seems timeless. The model offered the looks and performance of an armored train. It drove like a Detroit muscle car, if a Detroit muscle car were both wholly devoid of muscle and designed by a people genetically hardened over thousands of years of nine-month winters. 

The 700-series Volvos, 1982 to 1992, handled better and could be had with more power, but they were very much of their period, styled like angle iron through a wood chipper.

Wait, that’s cruel. 

Maybe . . . an Aston Lagonda through a wood chipper.

Regardless, they are fine cars, and some people like them. One of those high-school 740 owners was my friend Seth Teel. During our junior and senior years, he drove a red 740 wagon, a high-mileage automatic. The other friend, Matt Williams, drove a similarly weathered 740 Turbo sedan. 

Matt’s car didn’t stick in memory. I mostly remember how its small factory boost gauge sat off in a corner of the instrument cluster like an afterthought. The car’s analog dash clock, parked next to the speedometer, was maybe four times as large.

That choice is very Volvo, very Swedish: “You have boost, but who cares? Shouldn’t the clock be larger? For are we not all born of the opportune meeting of the great and yawning worlds of Niflheim and Muspell, their fated intersection at the featureless void of Ginnungagap? Do we each not count the days until our inevitable reunion with Odin the All-Father—son of Buri, Bor, and Bestla, who were in turn freed from the eternal ice by the slow but persistent licking of the cow called Audhumla? Isn’t time all there is?”

Side note: Do not go down the rabbit hole of Norse creation mythology without time on your hands. It’s incredible.

***

Back to Seth Teel’s car. 

Seth is like a brother to me. This individual long ago became one of my top-five desert-island humans, the kind of person you collect almost without thinking, then later wonder how you managed without. Like my wife, he knows me better than I know myself.

More to the point, when I was an angry high-school kid, insistent on being alone and stupid about far too much, Seth decided, in the face of my own great protest, to be my friend. 

Because I clearly needed help.

We met in some class at school, junior year, discussed shared interest in some band or record label. High school being high school, I had recently been abandoned by a few old friends, or so I thought. In retrospect—this realization did not come for years—I had simply grown sad for a bit, as teenagers do.

Perhaps it was loneliness or hormones. Whatever the reason, that sadness caused me to stop calling that group of old friends. When we did chance to hang out, I no longer knew how to be myself. I could only be grouchy and miserable, a terrible combination of far too sensitive and not sensitive enough. Which, in turn, prompted those people to stop calling me.

That “abandonment” was a minor thing, but it set to motion a larger process, one I have never really understood.

In the weeks that followed, I grew angry and despondent. Affected depression, tried on like a hat, opened the door for real depression, complete with physical symptoms. When my parents, firm but patient people, tried to help, I responded to their outreach and love in predictable fashion: I became a tremendous dick.

The selfishness and self-sabotage snowballed. I went to my part-time job religiously but started cutting school regularly. I began sleeping through classes and spending months of weekends in my room. I begged out of family meals, laying on the floor next to my bed and listening to music for hours, pausing late-night staring contests with the ceiling only to slouch to the kitchen, where I would offset a lack of dinner by cooking and eating half a box of instant mashed potatoes.

Nights were awash in self-pity. Hours where I angrily read books or sullenly watched TV while wishing for plans and friends just so I could cancel on each and show everybody. (Show them what? Who knows.)

Perhaps the most asinine part was my opinion about new people. I became convinced that any potential friend or girlfriend who reached out at school—and they did, remarkably—was insincere. Engaged in some long con to make fun of me. No evidence existed to support this theory; I conjured it from thin air. I hated myself and couldn’t let it go, I thought, so why would anyone else feel different?

It seems so stupid now. But then, we all are, growing up.

Seth had our address; he had once visited the house to pick up a loaned CD. In the weeks after, he must have noticed something in class, because he just kept showing up at our front door, uninvited. Not that there weren’t other outlets. He was tall and funny and in a band. Girls were drawn to him. Still, there he was, afternoons, Friday nights, whenever, on our stoop, ringing the doorbell.

That was, I would learn, Seth. When he sees something he doesn’t understand, he shakes his head and dives in. So he would come to our front door and tell my parents he was here to see me. When I responded by moping around the kitchen or grumbling back to my room to sleep, he would invent some reason to stay, then trap my mom in polite conversation both absurdly polite and peppered with F-bombs. (She found this combination hilarious and endearing, but then, that was my mother.) 

Mom died a while back, but as she once jokingly told me, Seth was the son she never had. That affection locked, I think, when he began pulling me out of the house.

Naturally, I resisted. Not least because I wasn’t sure why he was there. Early on, when I refused to leave, Seth would simply plop down at our kitchen table and kick off long chats with my parents. Or he’d do things like amble into the den and throw a movie on the TV while simultaneously ordering a pizza and talking to the dog. Either way, he hung around for hours, infinitely agreeable and chipper but somehow immune to argument. He shrugged it all off, as if it was just how the world worked.

One day, worn down, I caved and we left. I want to tell you that he physically threw me into that Volvo and shut the door in my face, but I’m probably making that up. And while time has blurred that first destination, it doesn’t matter, because none of them did. Bomb back roads for hours? Drive clear across town to see some tenth-rate punk band in a nearly empty hall? Pinball at midnight? Hit a party at some horse farm where teenagers were definitely not drinking bathtub ‘shine from an actual bathtub? Sure, yeah, why not?

If it sounds like a movie, it wasn’t. It was mostly just driving around, looking for something to do. The space between spaces of any high-school life. But it helped.

Somewhere along the line, we became friends. The process was so mysterious for my parents that Mom eventually sat Seth down and asked if we were gay. (Not judgmental; that wasn’t her. More like, What’s going on? Can I help?)

When you’re young, some people simply teach you to be yourself, and without trying. Mostly by encouraging you to be okay with what you see in the mirror. Because they’re okay with it.

Like me, Seth is now in his 40s. We see each other about a week each year. Even now, I can’t hear his voice without picturing that tatty old Volvo. He lives in San Antonio, where he remodels old houses for a living and wears flip-flops every day. He is as complex as anyone and has not had an easy life, but he is still the same guy, the one who kept showing up. Only now he pours weapons-grade cocktails and rattles off double entendres while my kids climb him like a jungle gym. The kind of behavior that would have made my mother laugh, then roll her eyes, then move to refill his drink. 

Digression for another lodestone: One of my favorite Seth Teel stories involves how, senior year, he totally did not start a side business selling psychedelic mushrooms, which are definitely illegal and should never be eaten by anybody.

Had this concentrated dose of not-capitalism actually happened, it certainly would not have lasted months. Around the same time, when an unrelated venture caused several thousand dollars to fall into his lap, Seth used that cash to buy a white 1969 BMW 2002. No great thought there; I had an orange ’76 2002 at the time, and he liked it.

Seth’s Volvo and the orange car are long gone, but the white one is still around. Years later, when I had returned to something like my normal social idiocy, Seth sold the BMW to my long-suffering, good-natured father. Then, partly because 2002s loom large in my family, Dad and I converted it to a race car. We went road racing, in a cheap entry class, with the Sports Car Club of America.

We didn’t know much, and we weren’t very good. I’m better now, though not as much as I’d like. Still, the experience remains one of the best parts of my life.

But that’s a story for another time.

***

You ever get the feeling that an inanimate object is somehow aware of your wants or needs?

It’s not like the timing lines up. That curb-hopping Volvo photo is from 1995, the year I turned 14. At that point, I wanted nothing more from life than to watch Monty Python movies while listening to loud music and thinking about girls and cars. 

I was a happy dork and didn’t care why. A few years later, I couldn’t stop thinking about myself.

If anyone ever tells you that being a teenager feels normal, they are lying.

“Touring Car” is British English for a family vehicle with four seats. Predictably, the British Touring Car Championship has long focused on four-door sedans. Established in 1958, the series has hinged on fierce and close racing, to say nothing of a certain image.

Professional athletes are in many ways professional complainers, and racing drivers are no exception. When the Volvo appeared, the competition grew whiny. Other manufacturers protested—the car’s presence diminished the sporting nature of the championship, they said.

By the 1990s, Volvo had a solid reputation for slow, safe, and dependable cars. The 850—a five-cylinder, front-drive sedan—was attempt to change that. Launched in 1991, the model was designed to replace the aging 240 range but ended up straddling the line between it and the marque’s larger 900-series cars. Which were really just a light redesign of the 700s, machines like Seth’s 740.

I have countless miles and years in Volvos. My grandmother drove a 240 wagon, then a 740 wagon; two more 240s filtered through our immediate family. Then, in 1995, Mom bought a new 850, a black manual sedan. That car was clearly related to older Volvos but of different cloth, more nimble and lively. (A mechanic friend once jokingly called the 850 “an Audi 5000 that works,” and he was right.)

The day Mom took delivery, I poked around the showroom a bit. A BTCC poster hung high on a nearby wall.

I stood there, gazing into that livery, thinking, Oh? Yes?

Volvo took the 850 road racing as a marketing exercise. Why the company initially chose the wagon for that work, and not the sedan, is one of those bits of history that much of the internet gets lightly but critically wrong.

The factory team was run by Tom Walkinshaw Racing, the British outfit behind Jaguar’s 1988 and 1990 Le Mans wins. A quick internet search will suggest that TWR ran the long-roofs for aerodynamic reasons. Next to an 850 sedan, the wagon offered drag and downforce benefits, but the advantage was minimal. In reality, the Swedes made the call to suck up media attention, and the gamble worked. In that first year in the BTCC, the 850s never finished higher than fifth. They did, however, earn a record amount of ink.

They also got hit a lot. If you believe the stories, this was mostly on purpose, because other drivers thought the cars were dumb.

Factory shoe Rydell again:  “To wind them up, in one heat, we drove with a large stuffed collie in the [trunk] during the parade lap.”

A year later, Walkinshaw switched to 850 sedans. A rear spoiler had become legal and shown significant benefit in testing. Crucially, however, BTCC rules did not allow aerodynamic aids to extend above a car’s roofline. As the wagon’s roof went all the way to the rear bumper, any aero addition worth the effort would not be legal. Sedan with spoiler was faster than wagon without.

Brand-new one year, too old the next, like so many great ideas.

***

Aging is one of those experiences we all have in common, like the mental fuzziness just before falling asleep or how a cold can turn your sinuses to lead. If growing old is any different, it’s only because we occasionally seem to have some compass in the matter.

So many choices we make can seem to rudder the path a bit. Except they don’t, really. They just change how we perceive it.

You wake up one day and realize you are no longer young. You still feel that way, though, so you spend 20 minutes digging through classifieds for old Volvos. Thinking about the roads near your house. Taking inventory of various corners and switchbacks, trying to remember all the yumps and ridges.

Places where you could commit, say, a bit more than usual. Take a brief chance, make something happen.

High school was so many things. Painful, tiresome, sleep-deprived, miserable, educational, dusted with fun. The further I get from all of it, the more the details recede, the more the losses cease to matter.

What remains, then, is merely a sense of how important the right people can be, especially if you find them in the right place and time. And how an ostensibly boring old family car can, in the right moment, come to mean so much more than you’d ever expect.

***

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Audi juices up RS6 Avant and RS7 Sportback

Intake: Audi has unveiled new performance variants of the RS6 Avant and the RS7 Sportback. The new models utilize new turbochargers that increase peak boost from 2.4 bar to 2.6 bar, pushing the output of the 4-liter V-8 to 621 hp and 627 lb-ft, gains of 30 hp and 37 lb-ft. A new mechanical center differential will shuffle torque front to rear in the permanent all-wheel drive system, allowing for as much as 85 percent of the torque to be sent to the rear axle, or as much as 70 percent of the available torque to spin the front wheels. New 22-inch lightweight wheels are optional, shedding 11 pounds at each corner. Audi’s RS dynamic package, which nets a higher top speed of 180 mph, dynamic all-wheel steering, and a sport rear differential, is standard on the Performance models. An additional package, dubbed RS dynamics plus, will also raise the top speed further (nearly 190 mph) and will score you a carbon ceramic brake package which sheds an additional 75 lbs over the standard steel brake system. You can have your performance wagon or sportback in 16 colors, three of which—matte or metallic Ascari Blue and matte Dew Silver—are new. Exterior accents are all dark gray, while interior accents are blue. Audi says that the new performance versions of the RS6 Avant and the RS7 Sportback will be available starting on December 8. Pricing for the U.S. versions will be revealed at a later date.

Exhaust: Audi’s über wagon and its slinky sportback cousin are some of the best Autobahn stormers in existence. Both were already glorious machines of excess, but we’re always down for more power and a heightened sense of occasion. — Nathan Petroelje 

Lordstown Endurance pickup deliveries begin

Intake: Lordstown Motors, the electric pickup truck manufacturer startup based in Lordstown, Ohio, in a shuttered GM plant, has begun deliveries of its electric pickup truck, the Endurance. The pickup is designed for commercial fleet customers, though it plans to sell the truck to individuals, too. The truck has unique in-wheel motors where the brakes would normally be. Lordstown has had problems with financing, depending on Foxconn, the Chinese iPhone manufacturer that owns the plant, for investments. There is known to be additional room in the plant for other lines, and Foxconn has had talks with Volkswagen about building the new Scout. The plant already builds a car for Fisker, and an electric tractor for Monarch.

Exhaust: We’re pulling for the plucky company, and our test drive of the comparatively bare-bones Endurance was positive. “The Endurance will provide benefits to customers that use their vehicles for work. It optimizes key attributes of traction and maneuverability—with our in-wheel hub motors, safety—with our five-star crash performance, and value in the segment,” said CEO Edward Hightower. Still, electric truck manufacturers like Ford and Chevrolet have not forgotten the commercial market, and will be tough competition for the Endurance. – Steven Cole Smith

Say hello to Bertone’s 110th anniversary supercar coming out party

Intake: After years of inactivity the Bertone design studio is back, just in time for its 110th anniversary. Bought by car enthusiasts Jean-Franck and Mauro Ricci back in 2020, the Italian firm has a new car in the works, and a new website to show it off. Details are still as sketchy as the shadow-laden digital renderings, but the proportions and aerodynamic ductwork suggest a mid-engine layout. Elegant curves and muscular haunches abound, and the 8-bit lighting elements pay homage to Bertone’s famous aerodynamic wedge designs from the 1970s.

Exhaust: Considering the performance offered by rival Italian firm Pininfarina with their Battista hypercar, expect the forthcoming Bertone anniversary tribute to possess an EV powertrain with mind-altering power and performance. (Possibly with bits sourced from Rimac, just like Pininfarina?) While the odds of it paying direct homage to any of its predecessors (especially aforementioned 1970s doorstops) is highly unlikely, one can hope this is just the start of a storied brand coming back to provide a unique visual experience for customers and onlookers alike. — Sajeev Mehta

Ferrari: No more SUV orders for now

Intake: Ferrari has stopped taking orders for its new SUV, the Purosangue, since it has a backlog of orders that might take two years to fill, says Reuters, quoting the drive.com.au website. “Ferrari unveiled in September the gas-powered 12-cylinder Purosangue, which the Italian sports car maker prefers to describe as a four-door, four-seater. It pledged to keep the model’s sales below 20 percent of total group shipments over the car’s life-cycle to retain a degree of exclusivity,” says Reuters.

Exhaust: Those who thought the SUV would represent the end of Ferrari—just like those who thought the Cayenne would spell the end of Porsche—obviously forgot to tell Ferrari’s customers. We guess that 715 horses, acceleration from 0 to 62 mph in 3.3 seconds, and a top speed of 193 mph appeals, even if it isn’t electric. (Or maybe because it isn’t electric…) – SCS

Singer and Theon present two takes on the Porsche 911

Intake: Britain’s Porsche resto-modders have been busy, with both Theon Design and Singer’s U.K. division releasing their latest interpretations of the classic 964-era 911. Singer calls its newest example the Naples Commission, and this Dynamic Lightweight Study is bodied in raw carbon fiber with lime green striping and matching magnesium wheels, together with a vivid green interior. It’s powered by a four-liter, naturally aspirated flat-six fettled by Williams Advanced Engineering to deliver 500 hp, and boasts a host of aerodynamic features to direct air at speed. There’s a special channel in the roof and a small ridge spoiler that steers the airflow to the ducktail at the rear, while a diffuser manages airflow under the car. The front air intake speeds outside air to oil coolers on either side of the car, and hot air vents ahead of the font wheels so it won’t disturb air under the car.

Over at Theon Design, a different approach has been taken, with the addition of a supercharger to the 3.6-liter flat six to deliver 400 hp. The Rotrex blower sits where the car’s air conditioning unit would have done and feeds cold, compressed air forced through two charge coolers to the motor. The engine internals have been re-engineered with independent throttle bodies, flowed and ported heads, a lightened bottom end, motorsport-grade Mahle barrels and pistons, as well as Carillo rods and custom profile camshafts. Theon also adds TracTive semi-active suspension with electronically switchable dampers, and a limited slip differential. Like the Singer, Theon’s BEL001 (named as it will soon be headed to Belgium) is also bodied in carbon, but painted in an aquamarine hue, based on a historic 356 color.

Exhaust: If you’re in the market for a modern take on a classic 911, it seems you’re spoilt for choice. Singer is now moving exclusively to the 964 Turbo, while Theon continues to offer normally-aspirated models alongside this new supercharged special, and both companies’ imagination, engineering and craftsmanship are extraordinary. So too are the prices with a Singer DLS costing $1.8m and Theon prices starting at $455,000. — Nik Berg

The post Audi’s hottest wagon gets even hotter, Bertone rises, two-year wait for Ferrari SUV appeared first on Hagerty Media.

It is often said that Queen Elizabeth II favored driving her Land Rover Defender, even sending it back to have the automatic gearbox changed to a manual. Yet the late monarch was also particularly taken with a humble Jaguar X-Type family five-door– clocking up a healthy 70,000 miles, more often than not taking the wheel herself.

Now the former royal runaround is to be auctioned, without a reserve price, on November 26. Many will have seen it before, with photographs of the Queen driving her Jaguar published by both the press and members of the public, who would often encounter Her Majesty in the grounds of Windsor Castle.

Despite the X-Type earning lukewarm praise from the critics, Her Majesty was a long-standing supporter of Jaguar. She took on ownership of the facelifted model in 2009—believed to be her second X-Type Estate—with the pre-delivery inspection carried out by the Jaguar factory, at Browns Lane.

Finished in its original Emerald Fire with a Barley leather interior, the car’s royal status is confirmed by its original paperwork, and naturally it was ordered in plush Sovereign trim level. It features the flagship 3.0-liter V-6 gasoline engine, and comes with a sunroof, automatic transmission, electric windows, climate control, a comprehensive service history and Heritage Certificate from the Jaguar Daimler Heritage Trust.

The X-Type range was launched in 2001, and facelifted in 2008. It was developed during Jaguar’s Ford-owned era and based on the platform that also underpinned the 2002 Ford Mondeo—albeit reengineered to accommodate four-wheel drive—and built at the Halewood plant.

Reviewing the facelifted X-Type at the time of its launch, Andrew Frankel, Hagerty contributor and former Road Test Editor of Autocar, pondered whether the X-Type estate was up to scratch: “It’s a pleasant and capable device, though it remains to be seen whether being merely pleasant and capable is enough to persuade the public to desert their 3-series Tourings in favour of a concept as novel as a Jaguar estate,” wrote Frankel.

Naturally, the late Queen stood by Jaguar, even if the BMW boasted a sweeter chassis and better residual values.

James Good of auctioneer Historics Auctioneers commented: “It is such an honour to bring to auction such an iconic piece of history—and a car that was evidently so much enjoyed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. A wonderful and unrepeatable collectible to treasure.”

Although a trade-in on an equivalent X-Type Estate would be worth less than £4000 ($4550), it goes without saying that the royal connection means it could fetch a Queen’s ransom.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it.

Via Hagerty UK

The post Queen Elizabeth’s Jag wagon is a most royal runabout appeared first on Hagerty Media.

There are few finer automotive noises than those of an inline-six. And there were few finer inline-six noises than the ones produced by the Volvo V60 Polestar.

With a transversely mounted engine, all-wheel drive and an estate body, the Polestar launched in the U.S. for the 2015 model year. It wasn’t an all-out sports car like the F82-generation BMW M4 that debuted just a year later. But where the BMW’s six sounded like a tumble dryer gargling diesel and rocks through a megaphone, the Volvo unit was a multiphonic experience, from refined but purposeful idle to a strident, musical top end.

It sounded and behaved exactly the way a straight-six should sound and behave, and proved a fitting send-off for an engine that was soon to disappear, as Volvo replaced fours, fives and sixes for four-pots across the board.

And while not as powerful as the M4—its 3.0-liter six made only 345 hp to the BMW’s 425—the V60 Polestar (and its S60 sedan sibling) was far from a one-dimensional experience.

To prove it, Volvo launched the car at Dunsfold Aerodrome, otherwise known—and still used, at the time—as the Top Gear Test Track. It didn’t wheel out the Stig, but it did field Björk.

Thed Björk, that is, who’d just debuted in the World Touring Car Championship with Polestar (later Cyan Racing), and would go on to win both three Scandinavian Touring Car titles (in 2013, 2014 and 2015) as well as the WTCC in 2017.

In truth, the combination of hot-shoe driver and wide, open circuit wasn’t as exciting as Volvo had perhaps envisaged—the passenger laps were no wild, sideways thrill-ride. But it did show off the car’s strong grip and creamy engine, and when we finally got behind the wheel ourselves, the Polestar was no less appealing when presented with less talent.

It really made sense on the road though, where a thirst for unleaded aside, the standard-fit Öhlins suspension (a brand used in all subsequent Polestar models) managed to take the edge off the arch-filling 20-inch wheels and spray-on rubber, and the Brembo brakes felt great underfoot.

And you only had to look at the thing to realize the car’s appeal. This generation of V60 really was a handsome car, if not as practical as Volvos of old, and those fancy alloys looked spectacularly right under the arches. In Polestar’s signature Rebel Blue paintwork it was distinctive, but befitting the under-the-radar nature of a fast estate, it’s perhaps even better in a darker shade; our U.S. colleague Eric Weiner, editor of Hagerty Media, has a Polestar in black, and it looks fabulous.

[Editor’s Note: Rest assured, Hagerty UK published this article touting the Polestar wagon without any of my prompting. Future classic? Certainly—it’s part of why I bought it. Ingram for Prime Minister. — EW]

Inside, too, Volvo got things right, with a solid feel and, again common to the brand, some of the best seats you’ll find bolted to a vehicle. The well-considered cabin fits nicely with the V60 Polestar’s easy pace and neat handling, and of course that expensive-sounding six-cylinder exhaust note.

And that’s why the supercharged, turbocharged four-cylinder that replaced it was never quite the same, despite extra power. Just as the four-cylinder Boxsters and Caymans felt like a letdown despite their obvious talents, it’s a hard pill to swallow losing two cylinders off a genuinely engaging engine.

Future Polestars won’t even get that: now spun off into its own brand under the Geely umbrella, Polestar has become a kind of luxury, electrified offshoot from Volvo, rather than its performance arm. The Rebel Blue paint has gone, and exotic Polestar 1 aside, so have the engines.

The 1 is another future classic in waiting, but when enthusiasts of Swedish cars are clamoring for the best Volvo had to offer in coming years, it’s the V60 Polestar we reckon will find the most fans.

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it.

The post The Volvo V60 Polestar is a sure-fire future classic appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The automotive enthusiast community has a love-hate relationship with station wagons over time, but is it actually a hate-now-love relationship? Because what was once the butt of many a joke in the 1980s and ’90s fizzled into obscurity, only to arrive in the classic car realm with a new name: Longroof.

Indeed, the vehicles that look like a family sedan but with a far longer, far more practical roof are fully in vogue. No longer beaten down by minivans, SUVs, and crossovers, these station wagons are not only part of a bigger trend in longroof appreciation, but surprisingly obscure examples (of an already modest automotive genre) exist, surviving a seemingly-expected fate atop the scrapheap. So here are four examples of such longroofs on Hagerty Marketplace, none of which are the usual players in this space. And who doesn’t love having an obscure example of an under-appreciated automotive genre?

1978 Dodge Aspen

Asking price: $11,500

The Dodge Aspen and Plymouth Volaré made their mark on society with several major quality concerns, but do you remember they also came in a longroof with Chrysler’s legendary slant-six “Leaning Tower of Power” under its downsized hood? This Aspen wagon has an automatic transmission, power steering, and air conditioning. The colors are pure Malaise-era perfection, as the seller lists its hue as “Tahini Tan” with a dark tan vinyl interior.

The interior looks very clean and original, only with a bluetooth-enabled radio as both a modification and concession to modern times. The Magnum 500 rims also come with the original hub caps, making this Aspen wagon one of the best ways to embrace the downsized lifestyle of the late 1970s.

1986 Pontiac Parisienne

Asking price: $27,500

How could a General Motors station wagon be named after female denizens of France’s capital city, be sold in the United States and Canada, and get away with it? It probably has to do with the great bones underneath and the fact that it’s a catchy name no matter what. The Parisienne started life in Canada, but became a staple in stateside Pontiac dealerships by the time it was affixed to GM’s B-body as a coupe, sedan, and (wait for it) station wagon. Offering a bit more luxury and swagger than your average Caprice Estate, but not the ostentatiousness of the Buick Electra Estate Wagon, the Parisienne Wagon was perfect middle ground in a market that was rapidly contracting after the 1984 introduction of the Chrysler minivan.

But Pontiac persisted, keeping it around with a new name (Safari) until 1989. This example from 1986 sports a rather unconventional color scheme of sleek black paint, maroon cloth, and aftermarket wood-toned vinyl with blonde highlights. The list of expected interior features includes a rear-facing third row of seating, and is propelled by a 305-cid V-8 with a four-barrel carb. The seller states that every electronic assist works as intended, aside from the radio and cruise control, which is “spotty.” Like many GM products of the era, the bumper fillers need replacement, but a set of repair manuals are included with the wagon.

1963 Pontiac Catalina Safari

Asking price: $42,000

Wait, we have two Pontiac station wagons on Hagerty Marketplace? While Pontiac made the previous example into a throwback “Safari” towards the end of production, this 1963 example is a better representative of what made Pontiac’s longroof more appealing in the wagon’s heyday. This particular Catalina body was a big stylistic influence for the second-generation Pontiac Tempest, which became the GTO. (You can see it most in the split grille and stacked headlights.) Who wouldn’t want a family hauler with the style and street presence of Pontiac’s seminal creation for muscle car fans around the world?

This example sports Pontiac’s 389-cubic-inch “Trophy” V-8 with the standard two-barrel carburetor and an automatic transmission. The seller states that 18,446 Catalina Safaris were built, and he has collected significant amounts of documentation to prove the vehicle’s authenticity. There’s fresh paint and a redone interior, along with a promise of further improvements, as the owner states that items “like the dome light don’t work, but I’m slowly addressing things.”

1987 Mercedes-Benz 300TD

Asking price: $4600

No list of obscure station wagons for sale in America is complete without a diesel Mercedes-Benz wagon, right? But unlike your average, chrome-laden Germanic oil burner from the 1970s (the ones that put the brand on the map in America), this is a later 300TD based on the modern W124 chassis. Cutting edge at the time and still a stunning drive by modern car standards, adding a longroof and a turbo diesel engine to the W124 only makes it cooler. Maybe even cooler than the high-performance 500E?

This example has a whopping 425,000 miles but sports its original paint and interior. The owner stopped using it as a daily driver in 2013, but it comes with many restoration parts and previously serviced it with a “local Mercedes Specialist.” At this price, this W124 could make for a great project car that will take advantage of the diesel longroof’s long term profit potential, as they seemingly become even more popular over time.

HI-TOP LONGROOF: 1997 Chevrolet Express

Asking price: $5000

Clearly this isn’t a wagon, but it’s one heckuva long roof. The fullsize van has one of the best ratios of roof to (engine compartment) hood in the universe, and this one has the “high top” conversion that includes enough headroom for most folks to stand up inside the van’s massive cabin. The 1995-up Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana take all the best of van culture and pair it with modern day truck hardware.

While this older example lacks the LS-series engines, the Vortec 5.7-liter V-8 is no slouch for family hauling and can easily be souped up with bolt-ons, if a hot-rod long roof is in order? This example does need some attention after 289,000 miles and 25 years on the road, but the hi-top roof has a power-operated rear bed/seat, rear HVAC, wood trim, and accent lighting under its elevated cover. You can make a scene with a longroof these days, but there’s only one way to literally raise the roof at a car show.

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There’s a difference between station wagons and their sedan/coupe siblings, not only in the literal sense but also when it comes to values. Sometimes the value gap is negligible, and sometimes it’s so eye-popping that it requires a double take.

Below are seven examples of station wagons whose #2 (Excellent) condition values are significantly higher than sedans and coupes of the same model. The reasons for those value disparities vary—from looks and trim to rarity and nostalgia—but these longroofs come with a definite premium in the market.

You may find that some of the value differences make perfect sense, and some may also surprise you—especially the wagon that’s currently the king of the hill.

1981–93 Volvo 240

As Benjamin Hunting wrote in 2019, “The impact of the 200 Series—known more popularly as the 240—is undeniable. First a novelty, then a kind of anti-status status symbol, and finally a cult figure, this humble Volvo continues to be revered.” And the most popular form of the revered 240 is the wagon.

Looking at Volvo 240s from 1981–93, wagons are on average 11 percent more valuable than sedans, with an average value of $12,300. With a recognizable shape—perhaps one that might be considered iconic—Volvo may be associated with the station wagon more than any other car company.

1955–57 Chevrolet Bel Air

When you think of legendary 1950s automotive metal, the Bel Air instantly comes to mind … coupes and sedans, that is, but not so much station wagons. So how is it that Bel Air Nomads—those cool two-door wagons—are worth 27 percent more on average than Sport Coupes in #2 condition? They’re substantially rarer (plus they have really cool trim).

From 1955–57, Chevrolet built 21 times as many Bel Air Sport Coupes as Bel Air Nomads (488,340 to 22,897). In 1957, in particular, that ratio was 27 Sports Coupes for every Nomad. Today, the average value of a ’55–57 Nomad in #2 condition is $64,862.

2011–14 Cadillac CTS-V

Enthusiasts love high performance, manual transmissions, and stations wagons. Very rarely do all three come in one car, but the CTS-V wagon has it all. In addition to the the car’s luxurious features, the posh rocket has the heart of a sports car: a 556-horsepower, 376-cubic-inch supercharged LSA V-8 based on the LS9 V-8 from the C6 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1.

Relatively speaking, Cadillac didn’t produce large numbers of the CTS-V in any form, but there are significantly fewer wagons out there, making them more difficult to find and more expensive to own. Wagon production from 2011–14 was less than 10 percent of the entire CTS-V total, with only 395 of them built in 2011. It’s no wonder then that CTS-V wagons are worth 59 percent more than the sedans and 44 percent more than coupes, with an average #2 value of $74,600.

That big number will likely continue to rise, as CTS-V values have increased steadily since 2018, with wagons showing particularly sharp growth. Over the past five years, #2 values are up 49 percent for wagons, 15 percent for sedans, and nine percent for coupes.

1961–62 Chevrolet Corvair

Whether you love ’em or you hate ’em, Corvairs are unforgettable cars. While they have been discussed and disparaged ad nauseam—thanks, Ralph Nader—they remain affordable and unusual collector cars, a nice combination indeed. They’re just not equally affordable.

Chevrolet sold the Corvair in wagon form in 1961 and ’62, initially as the entry-level Lakewood 500 and the upmarket Lakewood 700. The top-of-the-line Monza 900 wagon was added later. While Corvair 700 wagons are worth 76 percent more than 700 sedans and 65 percent more than 700 Club Coupes, Corvair Monza wagons are worth 84 percent more than Monza sedans and 24 percent more than Monza coupes (but 11 percent less than Monza convertibles).

The average #2 value for Corvair wagons is $14,200 for a Lakewood 500, $13,800 for a Lakewood 700, and $15,300 for a Monza 900.

1979–85 Mercedes-Benz W123

The W123 platform was not revolutionary, but—according to Mercedes-Benz—it was “rather a thoroughly mature mid-range car combining the latest engineering with tried and tested design features.” Not exactly an exciting description, but it certainly was an accurate one, and it reflects the lasting legacy of the W123: it’s a solidly built automobile with timeless poise and class. Three years after sedans and coupes hit the market, the 300TD wagon was launched for the 1979 model year; its naturally aspirated diesel engine was replaced by the turbodiesel starting in 1981. W123 sedans, coupes, and wagons were sold in the U.S. through 1985.

Today, the 300TD station wagon’s average #2 value of $41,400 is 78 percent greater than the average of W123 diesel sedans. While all W123 values have increased sharply over the past 2–3 years, wagons began rising long before that. Depending on the model year, 300TD wagons have grown an eye-opening 140–204 percent over the past five years.

1961–64 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 and Super 88

In a move to modernize its lineup, Oldsmobile introduced a completely new 88 in 1961. Plenty of body choices were available, but most buyers opted for either a conventional four-door sedan or a four-door hardtop sedan. Wagons made up a fraction of the total production.

Among the attractive features on the new full-sized Oldsmobiles were their 394-cubic-inch Rocket V-8s; the Dynamic 88 received a two-barrel, 250-horsepower version, while the Super 88 was powered by a four-barrel “Ultra High Compression” 394 Skyrocket V-8 rated at 325 hp.

American wagons were immensely popular in the 1960s, and they were driven hard as family haulers—likely more so when they possessed the power of the 88s—so their numbers have been greatly reduced over the years. All of that adds up to this: Oldsmobile 88 wagons are worth a whopping 108 percent more on average than sedans in #2 condition; 88 wagons are worth 30 percent more than coupes, and Dynamic 88s are worth 38 percent more than coupes.

1949–52 Dodge Coronet

Dodge’s late introduction for 1949 had been eagerly anticipated by potential buyers, but while the Coronet model name was new, the cars were conservatively styled in line with what Chrysler’s chief executive, KT Keller, thought customers wanted. The 1949 and ’50 Coronet wagons had wood trim, and today that’s a bigger deal than it was then. Collector car enthusiasts love woody wagons. How much? You’d better sit down.

Coronet wagons from the period—including the all-steel versions in 1951–52—are worth 635 percent more than same-model sedans and 422 percent more than two-doors in #2 condition. The average value of a 1949–50 Coronet wagon is $76,400, while the 1951–52 version is $16,600.

Yes, that seems unfathomable, but other 1940s and early ’50s woody wagons are also worth several times as much as their sedan counterparts—we just used the Coronet as an example. If this list was based purely on the numbers, it would be dominated by early postwar American wagons, including the 1946–48 Chevrolet Fleetmaster (worth 381 percent more than sedans), 1946–48 Oldsmobile Series 60 (541 percent more), and 1946-48 Pontiac Streamliner (484 percent more).

It seems that oftentimes it is entirely appropriate to put the wagon ahead of the horse. Or, at least, the sedan and coupe.

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It is a scientifically proven fact: wagons are cool. OK, I made up that science, but I doubt many car enthusiasts would disagree with it. Something else we can all agree on is when a wagon is obscure and weird, the cool factor increases by at least 1000 percent. I submit for your consideration this incredibly rad, and extremely funky, 1986 Volkswagen Quantum Syncro Wagon currently up for bid (without reserve) on Bring a Trailer.

So, what in the heck is this thing? Well, in Europe you’d know it better as a B2-series Volkswagen Passat/Santana and Audi 80 (Audi 4000 in North America). It’s the Audi part that makes this car truly interesting. The Quantum borrows Audi’s legendary Quattro AWD system (rebranded as Syncro on the VW), as well as the 2.2-liter Audi five-cylinder engine. Before you get too excited, it is not a turbocharged five-cylinder, so it makes about 118 horsepower. But that shouldn’t matter; Audi’s five-cylinder engine is literally one of the most unique sounding engines ever, and sound always makes up for horsepower.

Finding a Quantum Syncro of any sort is a tall order, and despite this one’s 168,000 miles—and dings and bumps from years of love—it is still pretty clean. Plus, it comes with service records stretching all the way back to the mid-1990s. There aren’t any major modifications to the car, aside from a set of wheels and a Magnaflow muffler.

This thing is beyond cool. Especially when you get into little details like the fact that “Syncro” is spelled out on the back window with the window defogger strips, or the Volkswagen and Audi logos are stamped into the cam cover.

This VW Quantum Syncro Wagon isn’t without it’s flaws, but who cares? As is, it’s certainly going to turn heads at car shows and get-togethers. And with a little time and effort to improve its cosmetics, this wagon could be transformed into one of the nicest Quantums you’ll find anywhere.

With four days still remaining in the auction, bidding has reached $5600. That’s a heck of a lot of value for the cool factor that this car exudes. Regardless of where the final price lands, it’s likely money well spent, considering you’ll be the only person with a Quantum Syncro to show up at your next car event. For many enthusiasts, that distinction is priceless.

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Norman and Adam Klassen sit in the open hatch of their BMW as the last rays of a warm summer’s day gild the wagon’s flanks. Norman, the father, has more than a half century’s experience as a body man. His son is a master BMW technician. They built this car together. What started as a shared obsession forged an unbreakable bond.

“History repeats itself,” Norman says. “It might be in one ear and out the other at the time, but you can still hear your father’s voice. I still hear my father. It comes back to you.”

Klassen Sr.’s car history runs the gamut from heavy Detroit iron to air-cooled Volkswagens. He built show cars and mural vans, and even once owned a Jensen Interceptor. He talks about getting the look of a car right, no matter what the car actually was, how friends joked that he could sew a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The creativity was the appeal.

Adam (Klassen the younger) detoured before embracing an automotive career. “First, I went into construction,” he says. “Trying to go my own way, you know? But really, I was trying to deny the inevitable. There are photos of me dressed up in a paint suit and mask. Hugging my dad under a Karmann-Ghia. I remember watching through the window while he painted the bumper of an E28 M5. He held on to that for years, gave it to me for Christmas when I was seventeen to put on my own 535i.”

Adam’s interest in BMWs started with the E30 3 Series. He still owns his first one. As a boy, he was always bringing car magazines to school, to the point that his teachers called home to gently suggest more conventional picture books. He loves getting to grips with the research, the mechanicals, parts numbers, and OEM accuracy.

The family has owned this BMW since 1999. It started out life as a rare Canadian-spec 525i Touring, rarer still for its unusual dual-panel panorama roof. Norman owned several 5-series wagons over the years, including one with a serial number just a few digits off this one: the cars would have been on the assembly line together at the same time.

In the latter part of his career, he was a representative for a German paint company, one that supplied most of the European marque specialists in the lower mainland. Driving around was his job, and he enjoyed it, but he says he was always a practical-minded man first. Bimmer wagons were the ideal fit.

This car’s custom paint is nearly two decades old, but the M5 looks brand-new. It’s not a factory color, but rather something Norman picked out himself. Other small details reveal themselves as you poke around. The rear tires, for instance, are 45 sidewall to the fronts’ 40 sidewall. It gives the machine an ever-so-slight forward rake.

When E34 BMW 540s started coming in on trade at Autowest BMW, where Adam worked in Richmond, British Columbia, the idea of a V-8 swap for the wagon started percolating. The car’s stock 2.5-liter M50B25 straight-six was a smooth and lovely thing, but not exactly a powerhouse. A wagon from a company whose middle name is literally “Motoren” deserved something better. Norman picked up a 540i as a potential donor. Too nice to rip apart. He bought another. The front yard started cluttering up with BMWs.

Adam laughs. “Mom was pissed!”

“None of this is possible without an understanding wife,” Norman says, “Looking back on it, I’ve basically gotten away with murder. Not literally, of course.”

Before the scalpel could descend on one of the 540s, a new path showed itself. A beat-to-hell E34 M5, white and worn out by eastern Canada winters, became available locally. Norman sold one of his 5ers and bought it. The work began.

“When did we finish the project?” he says, “I don’t think you’re ever finished.”

The M5’s engine was pulled out and sent to be rebuilt at a local performance shop. Meanwhile, Adam dived into factory technical manuals, sourcing parts, examining the schematics. Together they began pulling apart the rest of the donor car, subframes, hubs, gearbox, differential.

Working together forged the bond between the pair. But not without a few sparks getting thrown off.

“When you get older, you work a little smarter,” says Norman. “I was no different when I was younger. But you take a little more time to consider things before you do them.”

“You just want to get in there and get your hands dirty,” Adam grins, later adding, “My dad and I are so alike. We can butt heads a little. It’s like, ‘Dad, I know what I’m doing.’”

The finished product speaks for itself. Behind those four round headlights, complete with Canadian-spec headlight washers, sits the M5’s S38B36 inline-six. It’s been rebuilt with forged pistons, race-spec rods and main bearings, its six individual throttle bodies freshly ceramic coated. With a Dinan chip and a few other ancillary improvements, output is conservatively 350 hp, or roughly what the later European E34 M5s made.

More impressive, perhaps, is the father-son duo’s complete replacement of major chassis components. The unibody is still a wagon, but everything from the suspension components to the subframes has been removed and replaced with M5 parts. Bushings were all refreshed and replaced, the M5’s brake system was moved over, and the M5 gearbox was fitted with a lightened flywheel.

BMW built just 891 examples of the E34 M5 Touring, never selling them in Canada or in U.S. market. It’s one of the most rare BMWs, behind only the wedge-shaped M1. Almost twice as many 2002 Turbos were made. Today, they are expensive collector items.

The question that any BMW fan would therefore ask upon seeing a car like this is, “Is it a real one?” The honest answer is that it’s more properly a clone, a custom build. “Tribute” is maybe the best word for it. What it is matters a lot less than how it was made. Thanks to this shared passion, father and son sit in the sun, joking about long days in the garage, rehashing childhood shenanigans involving shifting gears before first grade, and the coming to a deeper understanding of one another that arrives only after many years. Working side by side on a project does help grease the wheels, though.

No, this 5 Series wagon didn’t leave the factory looking anything like this, aesthetically or mechanically. Norman and Adam know it’s all the more special for that. So yes, it’s a real one.

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Porsche won’t say it, but its newest car, the all-electric Taycan Cross Turismo, is a wagon. Lucky for us, the svelte Taycan sedan looks even better and more athletic with a long roof.

The looks alone would sell us, but Porsche further distanced the Taycan Cross Turismo from the Taycan sedan with an air suspension that is more tailored to bumpy roads. There’s even a “gravel mode” to help navigate loose road surfaces an optional off-road package that adds 30 mm of ground clearance. The standard wheel arch trims also set the Cross Turismo apart and help keep the paint safe from any stray bits of gravel. Inside, rear-seat passengers can eke out a bit more headroom thanks to the new roof, but the big change is the extra 42 cubic feet of space afforded by the rear hatch.

Porsche has been in the habit of offering buyers the mid-level trim at launch and then doling out a more affordable entry model and any ancillary performance variants as the years roll on. Not so with the Taycan Cross Turismo. Four models will be made available simultaneously. Starting with the 375-hp Taycan 4 Cross Turismo, the entry-level variant will still pack AWD (like all Cross Turismos). It also boasts 469 hp with “overboost power” for launch control, 0-60 acceleration of 5.1 seconds, and a [WLTP] range of 242–283 miles. (EPA numbers are not available just yet.)

Not a bad jumping-off point. Next up, the Taycan 4S Cross Turismo starts at 483 hp with a 563-hp overboost power launch setting and delivers 0-60 in 4.1 seconds with virtually identical range estimates as its non-S brethren. The Taycan Turbo Cross Tursimo ups the juice to 617 hp and overboost to 671 hp. It comes with a similar WLTP range rating of 245–281 miles and drops the 0-60 sprint time to 3.3 seconds. Finally, the Taycan Turbo S Cross Turismo has the same 617 hp as the Turbo, but adds a 751-hp overboost to the launch control, dropping 0-60 times to 2.9 seconds at the expense of a 241 to 260-mile range.

Oliver Blume, Chairman of the Executive Board of Porsche AG, noted how big of an impact electric powertrains have had at the company, “In 2020, one in three of all vehicles we delivered in Europe had an electric powertrain.” That number is only going to go up, as Blume promised that by 2025, “half of all the new vehicles we will deliver will have an electrified drive—either fully electric or plug-in hybrid.”

These handsome wagons definitely look like they’re delivering a package that’s consumer-friendly with a viable range for lots of activities and taking aim at Jaguar’s I-Pace with an even more sporty take on the segment. Porsche has yet to announce an MSRP for the U.S, but expect them to be well above the $80,000 RWD Taycan and arrive no sooner than this summer, when they’ll launch in Germany with a price tag of 93,635 Euros (including 19-percent VAT).

SUVs may be all the rage, but between the Taycan Cross Turismo and the Panamera Sport Turismo, there are some seriously good-looking longroofs emerging from the minds of Porsche designers.

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Natives of the German autobahns know that the left lane is basically just a gun barrel loaded with fast movers. No matter how quickly you go in the famous derestricted sections, some sleek projectile with nostrils flaring and headlights blazing is going to fly past with a whomp! of displaced air. And as often as not, that projectile is an Audi wagon, which are totally A Thing in Germany. VW’s luxury division has built many flavors of S- and RS-badged estates over the years for school-lane Schumachers who were craving a Porsche 911 but needed back seats and tailgate. That Porsche now sells many models with back seats and tailgates may have slowed Audi’s super-wagon business, but not stopped it.

Thus, hither comes (in the left lane) the 2021 Audi RS6 Avant, a 591-hp fire-breathing FedEx box that is sized like an SUV in every respect except height, is crammed full of more screens than the multiplex at the mall, and is endowed with the same twin-turbo 4.0-liter V-8 that gets stuffed into the Audi RS 7, Lamborghini Urus SUV, and a host of other VW Group road-eaters. The price starts at $110,045, big dough for a wagon, a body style that all but extinct in the U.S. Indeed, except for a few RS Avants that have leaked out to connoisseurs in North America over the years, these have largely remained a local passion in Europe where SUVs haven’t completely taken over (yet) and big-bore wagons are still considered status symbols.

We said it’s big. The RS 6 has unique bodywork, including a lot of sporty bumper jazz and some giant grilles, that pulls it out about two inches wider than a regular Audi A6, no small thing itself. Indeed, the length and width put the RS 6 Avant within an inch or three of a Ford Explorer, which most people would not consider small, though the Audi is about ten inches lower so it’s definitely still a car. You feel the girth when you park it in a driveway next to a vehicle from the Before Times when cars weren’t gigantic—like, say, a mid-2000s Toyota pickup. The Audi is also heavy, weighing in just over 5000 pounds, what with the twin turbos and Quattro all-wheel drive and 16.5-inch cross-drilled front disc brakes and giant 285/30 Pirelli PZeros ($400 a tire, so drive carefully) mounted on 22-inch rims. It’s a mighty burden for an engine displacing a mere 244 cubic inches.

Ah, but this is an Audi in which 244 cubic inches combined with direct injection and launch control, plus a couple of intercooled turbos to squeeze in the air, is more than enough to deliver 60 mph in a little over three seconds. That’s legit supercar territory; to go faster on four wheels you’ll have to talk to Porsche, Ferrari, McLaren or, ahem, Tesla. The Corvette is in that conversation, too, but the C8 and mid-engine rides like it can’t also haul a pair of baby seats and a stroller.

There’s 590 pound-feet of torque to manage and the Quattro system does it transparently through the witchcraft of torque-vectoring technology, including an electronic limited-slip rear diff that varies torque side to side under command of the all-knowing computer(s). Audi’s four-wheel steering system makes the steering wheel even livelier, acting to cut precision arcs through corners at speeds that would horribly overcook the tires in most other cars.

Well, you need all that stuff if you’re going to square-dance with a 5000-pound partner. And the RS 6 Avant does hustle a twisty road with fearsome authority. For some reason it’s just so much more satisfying to charge a road in this than in any one of a number of sporty German SUVs that can do the job almost as well. When you go fast, you should sit low. That is how nature intended it and we don’t make the rules.

The RS 6’s cabin is Audi’s idea of tomorrow-tech, and almost all the tactile buttons have been swept away for high-res screens with ultra-fast core processors that can render 3-D maps as quickly as you can summon them. Do you need Google Earth in your car? Well, sure! There’s a 10.1-inch upper screen in the center and a 8.6-inch screen below, all touch-sensitive like so many iPads but equally distracting until you become an expert at working the menus with a blind hand. At least the steering-wheel buttons give you some authority over these screens to make simple tasks like changing the radio volume or seeking another station easier.

Being able to configure the all-digital gauge cluster with a road map or circular dials or an F1-style tachometer bar is neat stuff, but Audi could have given the driver more options than the three configurations offer. We’re talking some extra software code, which doesn’t add weight. Why shouldn’t the RS 6 Avant owner have a giant circular center tach if he or she desires, maybe flanked by readouts for torque production, catalyst temperature, and the stock price of Apple? Well, nobody at Audi thought of that, but the freedom afforded by digital instrumentation has yet to be fully realized by any car maker. You get only what they give you on a silicon wafer, for now, and it’s usually pretty limited.

The merging of organic and android themes is heavy inside, with swabs of polished metal accented by glossy black and carbon-weave panels (black or aluminum, take your pick). French top-stitching abounds, but in that precise, orderly way that Germans prefer, the rigid geometric pattern adorning our version of the seats evocative of ’80s techno. It’s fairly spacious both forward and in the rear, and the seats promise long-distance comfort if you like a firm bucket.

The RS6 has a variety of pre-set drive modes to suit your mood, but as in the past the car gives you a la carte control. Thus, if you want the eight-speed automatic to drop gears like two boxcars slamming together, but prefer lighter steering and a softer ride, you can order that up in the Individual mode. The auto mode is the S&P 500 index fund of Drive Select as it automatically clenches and unclenches the car depending on how you operate it, but it does mean the boost and transmission can be caught flat-footed if you suddenly decide to jump for a hole. Dynamic mode locks it in the sportier setting with extra roar and back-fire from the exhaust to suit, if you like that sort of thing all the time.

The RS 6 wants to run and its capabilities are far beyond what American law enforcement considers appropriate, so it wears a bullseye on its back. An even hundred in this thing offers no more white-knuckle drama than season 3 of Friends, so roadside chats with the cops are a distinct danger. Still, as all drivers of fast cars know, you find your moments, and they are sweet ones in the big Avant when the V-8 gets on steam and the scenery flashes past. If the transmission hasn’t pre-primed the engine then it can take half a heartbeat for the boost to build and the full fury to unleash, but if you first drop it a gear or two the Avant takes off.

The RS cars haven’t always been available to American buyers,. The sublime RS 4 disappeared years ago and the RS 6 was sold for one model year only (2003) as a sedan. The last RS 6 Avant supposedly had a crash-test issue with the rear-mounted battery, so it didn’t come over from Europe. There were always reasons—until now. It helps that Mercedes-Benz is importing the 603-hp AMG E 63 S wagon and Porsche sells the 550-hp Sport Turismo wagon version of its Panamera. Nothing rouses a German automaker like other German automakers taking the initiative. And the RS 6 Avant undercuts them both on price by a significant amount.

Here in what may well be the final decade or two of the internal combustion engine, the RS 6 seems a bit of a throwback as electrics achieve with one moving part what the Audi achieves with zillions. But we won’t fault Audi here for being atavistic; its EV plans are well known and aggressive. In the meantime, a lucky few (very few) will get to hog the left lanes of America in this machine. Keep an eye out for them.

2021 Audi RS 6 Avant

Price (base/as-tested): $110,045

Highs: Big-bore wagons are cool, gets you there PDQ, loads of luxury and tech.

Lows: Heavy and expensive, cop bait, sits low compared to an SUV (oh wait, that’s a high).

Summary: Rare in America, the new RS 6 Avant renders you an autobahn king in a land with no autobahns.

The post Review: 2021 Audi RS 6 Avant appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The more auctions that are rescheduled, relocated, or held online, the more we continue to be impressed at the quality of vehicles available. Case in point: the selection of woody wagons on offer through Worldwide Auctioneers at its 2021 Scottsdale sale (which is actually held at the auction house’s headquarters in Auburn, Indiana). On Saturday, January 23, you’ll have slew of remarkable wood-paneled wagons to choose from; many wear beautiful restorations performed by woody expert Nick Alexander of Los Angeles, California, and each one is rare. Two are unique. We picked our six favorites to help you narrow things down—or simply fuel your window shopping.

1947 Mercury Series 79M Marmon-Herrington 4×4 Station Wagon

We take for granted that most family-toting vehicles are available from the factory in an all-wheel-drive variant, but back in the late 1930s and ’40s, you could only get an all-wheel-drive station wagon via special order—and by paying a hefty premium. Indiana-based Marmon-Herrington converted Ford and Mercury wagons to off-road spec by hand, taking delivery of standard-issue wagons and handing the beefed-up trucks back to Ford to be sold through the OEM’s dealer network. The 4×4 conversion process was roughly equal to the sticker price of the vehicle.

In part because of the eye-watering cost, Marmon-Herrington wagons weren’t overwhelmingly popular in their day. Most orders came from the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. Army, and a handful of outdoorsy civilians. After 1948, the year in which production resumed following WWII, Marmon-Herrington stopped converting the woody wagons.

Worldwide reports that this 1947 example is one of only six Marmon-Herrington conversions surviving today, one of three Mercurys to receive the conversion, and the only one from ’47. As befitting its rarity, the ’47 woody received a painstaking frame-off restoration. Equipped with a 239-cubic-inch V-8, a four-speed manual, and hydraulic drum brakes, the Parrot Green wagon boasts a pristine, factory-correct interior finished with genuine leather—and, of course, a gorgeous expanse of varnished maple and mahogany.

1942 Mercury Model 29A Station Wagon

Though both Ford and Mercury wagons were eligible for the Marmon-Herrington 4×4 conversions, Mercury’s offerings were distinguished by being slightly up-market of Ford’s—even if you chose a two-wheel-drive model. This woody station wagon was the most expensive Mercury you could buy in 1942; it stickered at $1425 (about $22,500 today, which in hindsight seems like a bargain). You paid for more interior room (the Mercury’s wheelbase was 4 inches longer than the Ford’s), more power (5 hp, to be exact), and more luxurious amenities. Even so, most of the 783 Mercury woody wagons produced in ’42 were pressed into military service. Only six exist today.

This Moselle Maroon example wears a top-notch restoration, down to the correct woodgrain for the dash and a new fabric top dyed to match the exterior paint. (We’re particularly a fan of the maroon/maple combo here.) Under the hood sits a 239-cubic-inch V-8 mated to a three-speed transmission with a column-mounted shifter. The only period-incorrect item is the battery.

1934 Ford “Strathglass” Estate Wagon

No, “estate wagon” isn’t a highfalutin’ 1930s marketing term. This ’34 Ford is actually a one-off commissioned by an East Coast business tycoon of Scottish descent who needed a vehicle big enough to schlep his guests around his giant estate on the Potomac River (which he named Strathglass, after his father’s hometown in Scotland, Strathglass Carries). Even if his guests didn’t crave woodland views, Hugh Chisolm couldn’t possibly deny them the chance to be chauffeured to the riverfront, where they could ride his 243-foot yacht Aras.

Among those Chisolm entertained on his yacht were U.S. presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman; and it’s reasonable to assume that they were transported from the Chisholm home to the dock on the leather benches of this solid-oak wagon. Worldwide notes that the custom build appears to include a custom tailgate ramp, necessary to accommodate a wheelchair—potentially, F.D.R.’s?

The coachbuilt Ford’s powertrain was upgraded in-period from a 75-hp flathead V-8 to a ’46 Ford 59AB V-8 with 100 hp. The oak woodwork has been restored, although the wagon wears its original coat of paint, and the driveline is in fine fettle thanks to regular exercise given it by the consignor. The last time we saw this fascinating Ford was in 2012, when it was bid to $70,000 at Worldwide’s sale in Auburn.

1950 Monarch Station Wagon

The Monarch marque may be unfamiliar to many—but not if you’re Canadian. Under the skin, these station wagons were essentially Canadian-built Mercurys. The details, however—trim, grille, taillights, and hood ornament—distinguish Monarchs as Canada-specific vehicles. Monarch eventually offered four different models in the Great White North between 1946 and ’57, and the gleaming two-door 1950 woody wagon you see here is the rarest of the set, with only 43 produced that year. Today, it’s one of three known to survive.

This example has spent most of its life in its Canadian homeland. It wears a slightly older 1999 restoration, but the attention and effort invested shows in its gleaming maple and mahogany panels, plus its Canada-only Metallic Maywood Green paint. Our favorite detail? Those fabulous whitewall tires.

1949 Mercury Series 9CM Station Wagon

The 9CM Station Wagon was initially intended to be a Ford model, but Ford decided to promote it to the more posh Mercury brand for the 1948 model year. The wheelbase grew in both length and width, and the wagon got a new front grille to differentiate it from its Blue Oval brethren. The 9CM might not be as utilitarian as the Marmon-Herrington-converted wagons, but it still boasted thoughtful features; if you needed to haul a couch home from the store, and had to lower the tailgate, the taillamps swung to face backwards and alert nearby drivers if you hit the brakes.

Though this isn’t a true wood-bodied woody—its frame is steel, and the wood is electro-bonded to the metal—the 9CM received a meticulous frame-off restoration. From the faux woodgrain dash to the 255-cubic-inch engine, this is a factory-correct beauty.

1934 Ford Model 40 Station Wagon

If you’re a Michigan native, this model may be of particular interest. It was built in Ford’s Iron Mountain plant using basswood, birch, and maple harvested from the Upper Peninsula. Since these four-door wagons were used for hauling cargo, flawless examples like this one are rare. This wagon retains its original 85-hp, 221-cu-in V-8, a feature that makes it even more desirable.

As you may have expected from the other concours-quality woodies on this list, this Vineyard Green Model 40 has been thoroughly restored. Worldwide notes that all door panels are flush and all hinges are straight; even the back tailgate opens and shuts easily. All that excellence could produce a final result that crests six figures—a #1-condition (Concours) example carries a value of $116,000 (and this is the only example of the six that we currently track in the Hagerty Price Guide).

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In the midst of the controversy surrounding the design of the 2021 M3 and M4, a long-awaited enthusiast special is cruising toward reality: The first-ever M3 wagon. It’s officially called the M3 Touring, and we’ve just snagged the latest spy shots of this low-slung, fat-fendered beast. Sadly, it’s not part of BMW’s North American strategy, which means we’ll have to admire this high-powered longroof from afar.

Though the wagon’s performance stats will suffer slightly compared that of the M3 sedan and M4—blame the added weight—expect the M3 Touring to pack the same twin-turbo straight-six. In “base” trim, this engine makes 473 hp and sends all of that to the rear wheels; in Competition tune, a stonking 503 hp are sent to all four wheels.

The camouflaged wagon picture here packs the styling cues you’d expect from such a beefy estate: swollen fenders, two sets of wide-barrel double exhausts, a roof spoiler, dramatic side skirts, and additional front brake ducts. The spiderwebby wheels caught our eyes as well, not to mention the monster-sized rotors and yellow calipers lurking behind them.

Stare closely at the front fascia, and you’ll notice that—yes, tear your eyes from the grille for a second—the wagon doesn’t appear to share the metal mesh lower air intakes of its siblings. As that monstrous kidney schnoz makes plan, BMW designers are looking for any possible way to help that twin-turbo six breathe, and it appears that they ditched the mesh texture for a single-bladed opening. Of course, since this wagon is a camo’d prototype, we can’t be sure these change will make it to the final M3 Touring.

The wagon looks like it will also get the fussy fender vent just below the side-view mirror—it’s plastered over with squiggly plastic in these photos and seems to be purely decorative. The roof rails don’t look particularly functional either, but we’d guess that M3 Touring owners will happily splash some cash on a functional set after they take delivery.

Perhaps we’ll have to be satisfied with the new Audi RS 6 Avant  and stalwart E 63 wagon to satiate our lust for burly longroofs.  From what we can tell, though, the first-ever M3 wagon will be a most welcome addition to this elite club.

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Before the age of minivans, and certainly before the age of crossovers, wagons were default family transportation. Volvo was especially talented at studying and delivering what middle-class, kid-schlepping parents needed: safety, reliability, cargo space, and a little dignity. Though the Swedish outfit has moved its target significantly upmarket since the classic 245 debuted in 1974, Volvo has not abandoned its thoughtful execution of the longroof. Amid herds of tubby, towering SUVs, the V90 calmly stands apart.

The V90 isn’t a money maker for Volvo. The brand’s commitment to a body style so entwined with its brand image is not a response to insatiable demand. Both wagons—the V90 and its smaller sibling, the V60—represented just 2.74 percent of Volvo’s U.S. sales in 2019. SUVs, on the other hand, accounted for over three-quarters of the total figure. Both wagons are at this point familiar models, each riding on Volvo’s Scalable Product Architecture and firmly part of the Geely-era strategy (2010–present). The first V60 debuted in 2011 and is now in its second generation; the V90 arrived four years ago.

True, if you want a Volvo wagon this sleek and low-slung you must place a special order; Volvo’s U.S. dealers only stock the V90 in Cross Country configuration. (That’s Volvospeak for a slight lift, a dose of plastic body cladding, and all-wheel drive; such variants outsell traditional wagons roughly two-to-one.) The V90’s relative exclusivity perhaps adds to its appeal, though, and buyers willing to spend upwards of $60,000 on a traditional European wagon—one that actually rolled off the production line in Gothenburg, Sweden—will appreciate ordering their longroof exactly to taste.

The $67,640 V90 we tested was equipped with all major options, including the all-wheel-drive T6 drivetrain, a $6000 upgrade over the front-wheel-drive T5 powertrain that brings 316 hp and 295 lb-ft torque (vs. the T5’s 250 hp and 258 lb-ft). The power upgrade comes courtesy of a supercharged and turbocharged inline-four. An eight-speed automatic is the only available transmission. The Bowers & Wilkins sound system topped the list of add-ons at $3200, followed by the Advanced Package ($1500) which added a heads-up display and a 360-degree camera view. Volvo’s adaptive air suspension rang in at $1200 and the Climate Package—heated wiper blades, rear seats, and steering wheel—at $750. 20-inch alloys and metallic paint added $800 and $645, respectively.

The V90’s greatest strength is its design. This is a gorgeous vehicle with real presence on the road. (I’ll admit my bias as a Volvo wagon owner, but even then, I don’t reach for “elegant” when describing my brickish 245.) Few SUVs compete with the V90’s sleek profile—when was the last time a GLE earned a compliment from a U-Haul driver in a McDonald’s drive-through? Even so, the V90 doesn’t sacrifice practicality for elegance. Parents could pack this wagon full of kids and suitcases for a road trip one weekend, then hire a babysitter and take a luxurious cruise downtown for a night out the next.

Our tester’s sparkly Platinum Gray Metallic taupe paint proved especially popular with passers-by, but the good stuff is on the inside. The V90’s interior combines a calm, organized Swedish aesthetic with materials that are worthy of a large luxury wagon. Our Inscription model featured oak trim on the dash; R-Design models (there’s no difference in price) have metal mesh for a sportier vibe. The Nappa leather seats are superbly comfortable; at 5-foot-6, I particularly appreciated the adjustable side bolsters unique to the Inscription trim. A 9-inch, vertically-oriented touchscreen absorbs nearly all analog controls, leaving the center console clutter-free. Behind the delightfully simple steering wheel sits a 12.3-inch display framed above by a stitched leather dash. The standard panoramic moonroof makes both front and rear rows feel especially airy if you also spec the cream-colored leather. The only ergonomic oddity is the oblong, metal-trimmed engine start/stop button, which twists in the same direction for “on” as well as “off.” You get used to it, but it isn’t intuitive.

Having recently reviewed a T5-equipped V60 Cross Country, I found the V90’s twin-charged, 316-hp T6 four-cylinder far more capable: The V90 weighs only 90 pounds more, so the T6 powertrain’s additional 66 hp and 37 lb-ft of torque are a perceptible and welcome boost. Another advantage of the uprated powertrain is the 3500-pound tow rating; T5-equipped wagons top out at 2000 pounds.

Steering feel is rather artificial, but this wagon isn’t targeting the sports car crowd; if the lightness bothers you, you can configure an individual drive mode to add some heft. There’s significant road noise from the optional 20-inch wheels and tires, but the handsome alloys don’t make for a harsh ride. The optional air suspension does a solid job of soaking up impacts, even on dirt roads. Body roll exists, but it’s well-controlled. Lean into the gas on a cloverleaf on-ramp or back road bend and the wagon remains settled. Under aggressive braking or acceleration there’s noticeable dive/squat. Buyers willing to sacrifice an SUV’s ride height will reap the rewards of the V90’s car-like stance and its well-mannered driving behavior. The wagon soaked up highway miles, inched through city traffic comfortably, and handled twisty roads with confidence.

The V90 comes equipped with a suite of safety and driver-assist features that befit a 2021 luxury wagon. The LED headlights swivel to “see into” a corner, lane-keeping and lane-departure systems are ever vigilant, and Volvo’s driver assistance system (Pilot Assist) with adaptive cruise control comes standard. Once Pilot Assist and cruise control are engaged, the low-level autonomous system requires mild steering inputs to register driver attention. On the sweeping curves of Michigan’s two-lane state highways, the system frequently needed a hand, and Volvo rightly specifies that the driver should not wait for the system to provide steering assistance around curves. The optional head-up display (it’s bundled into the $1500 Advanced Package with the 360-degree camera view) is extremely practical when adapting to speed limits in unfamiliar areas.

Driver-assist and safety systems aside, Volvo’s Sensus infotainment system can be frustrating. The voice recognition system balks at “Take me to the nearest Target.” The name of a local park baffled the manual input system, which can only receive information beginning with country or state and ending with a house number. Though it boasts an onboard Spotify app, the system often took 10–20 seconds to load. That said, Volvo has clearly thought through the consequences of removing analog temperature controls; adjusting hot or cool air takes two simple taps, and the center screen’s simple default display isn’t distracting to the driver.

Volvo knows infotainment has been a weak point for its current-generation vehicles, and the company is planning to roll out an all-new Android OS interface throughout its lineup. The system, engineered by Google rather than by an OEM, is already available in the Polestar 2 and will premiere for Volvo in the 2021 XC40 Recharge.

Should you be willing to spend $3200 on a sound system upgrade, the Bowers & Wilkins sound system compensates for many of the Sensus system’s wrinkles. The 1400W, 19-speaker system is robust, warm, and beautifully balanced. I spent a delightful 38 minutes and 52 seconds virtually immersed in Donald Fagan’s The Nightfly without suffering from hissy or piercing trebles. The system can generate sternum-vibrating bass for, say, Billie Eilish, without triggering a migraine.

Though we associate wagons with vast amounts of cargo space—with the rear seats folded, my 245 can swallow a twin mattress—the V90 fails to trump competing SUVs on rear cargo space alone. With the seats folded, the V90 tops out at 69 cubic feet (2.6 more than the V60); Mercedes-Benz’s GLE has 74.9 cubic feet and BMW’s X5 72.3. Where Volvo’s wagon has an edge, however, is in usability—not to mention overall looks. Despite the luxurious, light-colored leather in the front cabin and both rows of seats, Volvo’s thoughtfully covered the back hatch and the rear surface of the second row in dark carpet. The second row easily folds flat, and the wagon’s low deck height and high-hinged hatch makes loading easy. The driver’s-side second-row seat stows separately, allowing for two rear passengers and pass-through panel for hiking poles or skis. The chrome scuff plate won’t stay pristine for long, though.

The V90 will perhaps struggle to convert younger shoppers keen on an SUV. On the other hand, those who want to buck the high-riding trend in particularly tasteful fashion will relish the V90’s unique style and exclusivity. For them, the cargo-swallowing hatch may be a practical aside to the V90 as an expression of an avant-garde, Euro-chic sensibility. It’s hard to imagine the 245’s eminently utilitarian designers foreseeing the Volvo wagon evolving in this way, but when the final product is executed this well, we’re happy to be along for the ride.

2021 Volvo V90 T6 AWD Inscription

Base/as-tested: $59,440/$67,640

Highs: Refined, eye-catching exterior. Convincingly luxurious interior materials. Seats and stereo are ideal road trip companions.

Lows: Clunky voice recognition, molasses-slow infotainment load time upon startup.

Summary: The Volvo wagon transmogrified into a graceful statement of avant-garde luxury. Get used to it.

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While we rightly mock the 1970s for using traditional coachbuilding nomenclature (i.e. Landau, Brougham, even Berlinetta and Town Car) for nothing but window dressing upon uprated trim levels, traditional coachbuilders were still engaging in proper coachwork in the era of pleather and polyester. Such legitimate affairs included neoclassic coupes with elongated snouts, downsized luxury sedans chopped up to look like neoclassic coupes, a handful of convertible conversions, at least two El Camino-like “Flower Cars” based on luxury coupes, and even “Estate” wagons based on luxury sedans. Let’s discuss the latter—specifically, the Cadillac Fleetwood Castilian wagon.

We recently found this 1975 Castilian wagon on Facebook Marketplace. The owner suggests it is one of 11 ever built by Traditional Coach Works of Chatsworth, California. This example was supposedly bought new, 72,000 miles ago, in Las Vegas by the Western Conference Teamsters Union. That raises eyebrows if true, but at least this Caddy doesn’t hemorrhage money like another such organization’s private golf club. The seller’s asking price is $10,000, a small fraction of the original $30,000 asking price in 1975.

This Fleetwood Castilian was in good company: The likes of Elvis, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. also owned these custom creations. Based on a Cadillac sedan in Fleetwood trim and sporting the brand’s legendary big-block V-8 (a full 500 cubic inches, if a bit defanged by this point) there’s little doubt as to why the Town and Country set preferred to splash the cash on this over an Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser: Limited production and bespoke craftsmanship never go out of style.

About that craftsmanship: Check out the custom roofline with a D-pillar fast enough to make a Mercedes-Benz GLE Coupe nod its head in approval. The tailgate is clearly not taken from General Motors’ parts bin: Custom metalwork blends effortlessly with decklid sheetmetal taken from the Fleetwood sedan donor. The result is a tailgate that closes just like the Cadillac from whence it came.

The brushed aluminum C-pillar with lighted coach lamp (compete with Cadillac logo) is a suitably decadent, high-zoot touch. The roof-mount airfoil and luggage rack round out the list of functional changes to the Fleetwood’s body.

Cracked filler panels are commonplace, and not a big deal to address thanks to the aftermarket. But is this wagon worth the effort? Do note that a mint Castilian wagon recently sold for $55,000, making this a not-terrible restoration candidate, provided rust was kept at bay. A pre-purchase inspection seems mandatory given this Castilian’s residence (Anchorage, Alaska), not to mention its status as a rare and obscure piece of Malaise Era automotive history.

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Early this month, the four-ringed firm announced a limited edition of 25 2021 Audi RS6 Avant “RS Tribute Editions” as an homage to the 1994 RS2.

Sure, for $109,000 the new car has 591 horsepower and can launch itself from zero to sixty in 3.5 seconds with its four-liter, twin-turbo V-8. But it, and every other high-performance Audi Avant, will forever be in the shadow of the O.G. RS2.

The RS2 was built to rival the rapid Mercedes-Benz AMG C36 wagon. Audi sought assistance from Porsche, which was still independent and had just finished assembling the mighty 500E for Mercedes. The RS2 Avant came together at the same plant, and Porsche’s involvement in the design and engineering of the Audi was even more significant.

Let’s start with the engine. The 2.2-liter, five-cylinder turbo was already established as Audi’s most potent offering, but in Porsche’s hands it became even more powerful. The KKK turbo was switched out for a 30 percent bigger one with 1.4 bar of boost, a larger intercooler, new camshaft, new injectors, intake system, low-pressure exhaust, and a modified ECU completed the mods.

Now with 315 horsepower at 6500 rpm and 302 lb-ft of torque at 3000 rpm, the RS2 had serious shove. The six-speed manual drove all four wheels through Audi’s quattro system and its Torsen center differential. With incredible traction off the line, the RS2 was proven by the U.K.’s Autocar to launch harder than a McLaren F1, reaching 30 mph from rest in just 1.5 seconds. Zero to 62 mph took 4.8 seconds and the RS2 maxed out at 162 mph. “It is a most extraordinary horizon-chaser,” the magazine said.

It wasn’t just about straight-line speed, though. The RS2 really handled on its Porsche-fettled suspension and  7.0 x 17-inch Porsche Cup wheels (as fitted to the 964 Turbo) shod with Dunlop tires. Braking was by uprated Brembo calipers, painted red and emblazoned with the Porsche name.

You would also find the Porsche signature on the unique front and rear badges and the keen eyed would spot the aerodynamic side mirrors shared with the 964 Turbo.

Recaro seats in leather or a leather/suede combo, and a unique three-spoke leather steering wheel were installed, and buyers could choose from wood or carbon-fiber trim. The RS2 was available in 13 hues, from subdued blacks to brash reds but always looked best in RS Blue Pearl (a.k.a. Nogaro blue).

Although I never drove one, I did cover 3,000 miles in its wake during the first Gumball 3000, chasing it all over Europe in a Caterham Seven. It enthralled me far more than the supercars and supermodels that also took part—although that’s a whole other story.

Priced new at an equivalent of almost $120,000 in today’s money, the RS2 was never sold in the United States. But as of 2019 you can import one yourself, as Audi hinted at in this excellent commercial. Expect to pay at least $64,000 plus the cost of importing.

If you do get hold of one you’ll be in good company. Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason had an RS2, as did Phil Collins, Derek Bell, and King Juan Carlos of Spain.

And if I can ever raise the funds, I’ll be joining you.

The post The RS2 Avant is still Audi’s überwagon appeared first on Hagerty Media.

We talk a lot about classic sports cars, exotics, and American muscle, and for good reason. In our hobby, most of what we see people buying and selling falls into one of those categories. If we actually went back to the 1960s and ’70s, though, we would see that plain-Jane sedans ruled the roads. On the highway, we’d see herds of station wagons. Not minivans or crossovers—good ol’ fashioned station wagons. (Or estate cars, or whatever you want to call them.)

Most domestic wagons are old enough to be classics, and many are still surprisingly affordable if you’re looking for a stylish cruiser with room for some friends and maybe a dog or two. You really are spoiled for choice in this category, so we narrowed down the options to three big estate cars, each from a different brand but all built by the General, that could be yours for less than $20K.

1968–72 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser

Median condition #2 (Excellent) value: $14,000

In age of robotic names like “XT4” or “M550i xDrive,” “Vista Cruiser” sounds refreshingly straightforward. This wagon is built for cruising and, thanks to all that glass, both drivers and passengers have maximum freedom to enjoy the view (or vista) along the way.

The first-generation Vista Cruiser debuted in 1964, wearing sheetmetal from the A-body Oldsmobile F-85 but riding on a longer, 120-inch wheelbase. Extra headroom and an elevated roof inset with smoked glass panels at the front and sides further distinguished the Vista Cruiser and its cousin the Buick Sport Wagon.

A second generation debuted in 1968 with a one-inch longer wheelbase and new bodywork, but it still featured the trademark sloped skylight roof. Oldsmobile touted the second-gen Vista Cruiser as the “all-family Escape Machine,” with over 100 cubic feet of storage and a sun-drenched space for rear passengers. Most second-gen Vista Cruisers came with a 350- or 400-cubic-inch versions of the Olds Rocket V-8, but a few came with a 455 that Car and Driver called “a veritable bear.” The 1969 model got a new front grille and an available “dual-action” tailgate, which could open either from the side like a door or from the bottom like a normal tailgate. The 1969 Vista Cruiser also gained a three-speed Turbo Hydramatic transmission, although there are a few Vista Cruisers out there with a three-speed console-mounted manual or with a four-speed, floor-shifter unit. Other options included a third row of seats and a roof rack.

The following year Buick dropped the Sport Wagon, but the Vista Cruiser kept going with a subtle but complete restyling, and Oldsmobile built it until 1972, the company’s 75th anniversary. There was a third-gen Vista Cruiser, but it was essentially just a fancy Cutlass wagon, and it didn’t have the glass canopy that made the original Vista Cruisers so cool. Oldsmobile sold over 166,000 Vista Cruisers from 1968–72, and it was such a popular family car that a ’70 Vista Cruiser fulfills that very duty in That ’70s Show.

Vista Cruisers did millions of school drop-offs, grocery store runs, and road trips, so there aren’t a ton of them left. It’s also rare to find one in pristine condition. People don’t pour money into restoring a Vista Cruiser like they would a 4-4-2 convertible. However, though condition #2 prices for these wagons are up 31 percent over the past three years, values for “Excellent” examples still come in at just $14,000. They’re also surprisingly popular among younger buyers, with millennials making up 30 percent of buyer interest for Vista Cruisers even though they represent just 23 percent of the market. This suggests that even though big American wagons are all but extinct, people will still want to cruise the vista for years to come.

1963–64 Pontiac Bonneville Safari

Median condition #2 (Excellent) value: $15,200

The Pontiac Safari was better for hunting souvenirs than for tracking African big game, but the name implies a spirit of adventure and Safaris became some of the most popular wagons among American families. Pontiac used the Safari badge from the 1950s all the way up to 1991 (during the 1960s it got slapped on the full-size Bonneville).

The third-generation Bonneville debuted in 1961, and although there was technically a Safari-badged wagon, the underpinnings hailed from the lower-tier Catalina. That changed in 1963, when the Bonneville got a facelift with Pontiac’s short-lived but sharp-looking vertically stacked quad headlights. The Safari wagon also shared parts and chassis with the Bonneville, Pontiac’s top-of-the-line full-size model.

The following year, 1964 Safaris saw their bodywork swell a bit behind the doors. Besides that minor style change, and different outputs from their engines, the 1963–64 cars didn’t differ much from their precedessors. They were available with either 389- or 421-cubic-inch V-8s, and Tri-Power carburetors were available on both. Power ranged from 303 hp in the base 389 from 1963 to 370 hp in the Tri-Power 421 from 1964, but all versions are priced within a few thousand dollars of each other. Plus, they’re priced rather cheaply for what you get. The most expensive 1963–64 Bonneville Safari comes in at $16,900 in #2 condition. In the past 10 years, that price has only changed by $200.

1994–96 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon

Median condition #2 (Excellent) value: $14,500

Built at the dawn of the SUV era as wagons started to fall out of favor, these woodgrain wagons were old-fashioned on arrival. Today, they’re delightfully retro sleepers.

The eighth-generation Roadmaster was built from 1991–96 and was widely available as a sedan, but the 1994–96 Estate Wagons are the Roadmasters to have. In addition to the woodgrain, super-soft leather, and available self-leveling rear suspension, they also have an iron-head police-service version of the Corvette’s LT1 V-8. In the Buick it makes 260 hp and 330 lb-ft of torque, which is enough to get this hefty 4300-pound hauler to 60 mph in about eight seconds.

We noted growing interest in ’90s Roadmasters a few years ago. We even put them on our 2019 Bull Market list—and our selection proved accurate. These wagons’ average #2-condition value increased about 20 percent from September 2018 to September 2019, and since then the stat’s gone up another 10 percent. You still wouldn’t call Roadmasters expensive, though, and other than time-warp low-mile examples, they still trade for well under their original $26,400 MSRP (not adjusted for inflation).

Like this article? Check out Hagerty Insider, our e-magazine devoted to tracking trends in the collector car market.

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Porsche’s upcoming electric SUV, the Taycan Cross Turismo, has been delayed until 2021. The more spacious crossover version of Porsche’s first production EV was due to go on sale at the end of this year, but COVID-19 had other ideas.

According to Automotive News Europe a six-week shutdown at the Porsche factory meant that production of the Taycan was halted, leading to a shortfall in deliveries to the U.S. market where there has been strong demand for the Tesla Model S rival. The Cross Turismo was scheduled to start rolling off the line in September, but now that won’t happen until April 2021.

The Taycan has been a hit in North America with more than 1000 cars sold in the first half of 2020, despite a global pandemic and these production woes. Porsche CEO Oliver Blume is looking on the bright side: “The change is no disadvantage for us; we just optimized the cycle plan,” he said.

The Taycan Cross Turismo was first shown in concept form as the Mission E Cross Turismo (pictured) at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show. Having waited two years already, prospective buyers will just have to be a little more patient.

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While Audi and Mercedes-Benz have for years offered wagon variants of the RS4 and C63 AMG in Europe and other markets, BMW’s M3 has stayed out of the long-roof arena—until now. Munich is officially moving ahead with its first-ever production M3 Touring, although it should come as no surprise that the high-powered machine will not come to American showrooms alongside the upcoming M3 sedan and M4 coupe.

The rapid wagon was first confirmed on BMW-M.com, along with a dimly lit image of the rear end. We like the look—upright rear glass, shapely rear quarter panels, and four menacing exhaust pipes all point to speed and spaciousness in equal measure. For the front end, we’d expect the same gargantuan kidney grille we’ve seen plastered on the recently-leaked M4.

The M3 Touring should employ the same running gear as its upcoming M3 and M4 siblings, which means a 3.0-liter twin-turbo straight-six and a choice of six-speed manual and eight-speed automatic transmissions. We’d expect the M3 Touring to be pushing 480 horsepower, a figure confirmed by BMW as the tamer of two trims to be offered on the M3 and M4. The rowdier Competition trim, likely to be automatic-only, will bring 510 horsepower and a penchant for eviscerating track corners. Performance testing for the wagon begins this month at the Nürburgring, so we hope to come across footage of this lovely wagon in action in the near future.

Much to the despair of American wagon buffs, a BMW spokesperson confirmed that the M3 Touring is not planned for the U.S. market. The decision makes sense, as Americans have for years now voted in favor or taller crossover SUVS and pickup trucks over low-riding haulers, but a five-door M3 is no less tantalizing from afar.

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Once dismissed as the more practical, more cumbersome cousin of the sedan, wagons have finally cultivated a following that appreciates their interesting lines and superior utility. True, some wagons aren’t an improvement over their sedan descendants, but sometimes the wagon versions replace an awkward C-pillar with more chrome, more glass, and a lot more cargo room. Some two-door wagons even have better proportions than the coupes they’re based on. Plus, tailgates add a bench when needed. When you’re a kid it’s tough to bear a rear-facing seat. The practical benefits go on and on!

While Monterey Car Week won’t be the same this year, there are still notable wagons that will be available during online auctions this August. Here are our favorites that are up for grabs at these Monterey Online sales. We’ll give the highlights and also suggest where we’d put their people-mover practicality to use.

1949 Oldsmobile 88

RM Sotheby’s

The Olds 88 was more or less the Cadillac CTS-V wagon of its day. While many American brands were offering inline-six, flathead V-8, or flathead straight-eight engines, Oldsmobile had an overhead-valve V-8 that was both compact and powerful. The 303-cubic-inch engine kicked out 135 horsepower while Ford’s flathead was producing a meager 100.

Oldsmobile took a rather restrained approach to the application of wood to this wagon. Wood trim frames the side windows and dips into the beltline as it wraps around the rear and covers all of the tailgate. It provides a contrasting break from the classy metallic green paint. The engine bay looks amazing, with the Rocket V-8’s characteristic center-bolt valve covers guiding and separating the spark plug wires. We can’t explain what Oldsmobile was thinking when it designed that air cleaner, though—we’ve seen cars that couldn’t fit that massive beast in their trunk.

Our preferred road trip destination for this one: a classic Route 66 cruise.

1960 Dodge Polara

Gooding & Company, Lot 38

Perhaps you’re in the market for more room, more power, and some fabulous fins. The 1960 Dodge Polara wagon featured jet-age design and was packed with gorgeous details. In addition to the bold fins jutting from the quarter panels, the front fender trim has shark-like fins of its own. The interior is a mid-century marvel, with a dash clock made up of two rotating cylinders and a clear acrylic steering wheel peppered with metal flake. Under the hood, a 383 Mopar big-block makes an effortless 325 horsepower. This nine-passenger version, one of just 1768 made in 1960, is a rare sight. There may be just five remaining.

Our preferred road trip destination in the Polara: Palm Springs, where it would blend in seamlessly to the mid-century architecture.

1972 Volvo 1800ES

Gooding & Company, Lot 46

Call us crazy, but there are several members of the Hagerty staff that prefer the shooting brake version of Volvo’s P1800, the 1800ES, to its coupe predecessor. The longer greenhouse eliminates the coupe’s resemblance to the Karmann Ghia and naturally offers up much more room for luggage and gear inside. This three-owner ES was refreshed in 2015 and shows just 72,000 miles on the odometer. The 2.0-liter, fuel-injected engine received a rebuilt short block, so it should be churning out all of its original 130 horsepower.

Our preferred road trip destination with this sultry Swede: the ski lodge. Fair, it’s not AWD, but that didn’t stop other sports car from making a snowy trek. There’s plenty of room for gear inside, so no ski rack necessary.

2019 Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato

Bonhams, Lot 79

What’s not to love here? There were only 99 shooting brake versions of the Aston Martin Vanquish Zagato built, and this one is being sold as essentially as new, with fewer than 20 miles on the odometer. It’s powered by a 580-horsepower V-12 and as we’ve mentioned before, we’re huge fans of the design, particularly the ornate taillights. Inside, the cabin is filled with black leather highlighted by red and gold accents in a variety of textures. The luggage area, accessed by a rather small rear hatch, has room for the bespoke three-piece luggage set that’s included.

Our preferred road trip destination with this beauty: the nearest twisty road. This grand touring machine would eat up the miles on any long-distance voyage, which is all the more reason to skip the highway monotony and take the scenic route.

1966 Aston Martin DB6

Bonhams, Lot 86

One of just six DB6 shooting brakes with coachwork by Harold Radford, this Aston Martin was built in left-hand drive for its original owner in the U.S. market, who was an avid golfer and duck hunter. Thus, cargo space was vital. It was fully optioned from the factory and also received some aftermarket upgrades, including a sun roof, air conditioning, and a Bosch Koln radio. Its 4.0-liter, 325-horsepower, triple-carbureted inline-six was less than 50,000 miles and, like the rest of the car, remains in original, unrestored condition.

Our preferred road trip destination: an unending tour of golf courses, naturally.

The post Our 5 favorite wagons bound for 2020 Monterey Online auctions appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The mountains and winding roads around Snoqualmie, Washington, are enveloped in dense fog. This is the Pacific Northwest, after all. Lichen hangs from tree branches, and moss covers the ground like a dense carpet. Over one-third of Sasquatch sightings in North America occur in this region.

The weather clears as I approach the Snoqualmie River, allowing me to see something as unusual and, at least to me, nearly as exciting as a Sasquatch: a steady stream of station wagons passing over a small bridge. Volvos, Datsuns, Audis, Mercedes Benzes, Buicks, BMWs, Chevys, Subarus, and Volkswagens follow each other closely, making their way into the parking lot of DirtFish Rally School in a kind of long-roof conga line. There, 350-plus station wagons and their owners have gathered for PNW Wagon Fest, the largest station wagon meetup in the world. Now in its fourth year, Wagon Fest serves as a showcase of the Pacific Northwest’s affinity for these functional five-doors. It also highlights how car shows, and car culture as a whole, is undergoing radical change.

Note: The PNW Wagon Fest meet featured here took place prior to the stay-at-home orders that followed the outbreak of COVID-19.

Station wagons rose to prominence in a post-war era of growing highway systems and increased vacation days for middle and upper-middle class workers. Eventually, they became ubiquitous symbols of the suburban experience. When the Griswold family wanted to drive cross-country in the movie National Lampoon’s Vacation, it wasn’t going make the trip in a sedan. Instead, it’s the fictitious Wagon Queen Family Truckster—a 1979 Ford LTD Country Squire modified by the Warner Brothers’ prop department—that will forever be associated with the classic flick.

Released in 1983, National Lampoon’s Vacation recognizes the station wagon’s importance as part of the American milieu in the 1980s. The obstacles that station wagons face now, in the face of the booming SUV trend, had been put into motion long before Clark Griswold and the gang got involved.

First enacted in 1975, the U.S. Corporate Average Fuel and Economy Standards categorized station wagons as cars, meaning they were held to more strict fuel economy standards than light trucks. Due to their larger size and hauling capability, the standards were tougher for wagons to meet. Spaciousness and functionality are what made these vehicles suitable for many families, but minivans (and, eventually, SUVs) fulfilled these needs without the CAFE hurdles. Slowly, the tide turned. From the rise of the Plymouth Voyager to the immense popularity of the Ford Explorer, station wagons were largely displaced in American showrooms.

Today, only one station wagon, the Buick Regal TourX, is available from an American company and it’s already been cancelled following the 2020 model year. Even then, the TourX is little more than a badge-engineered Opel Insignia imported across the Atlantic—a reminder that Europe, unlike the United States, remains a fertile market for wagons. European manufacturers have limited or even eschewed their station wagon offerings in the U.S; in other cases, they’ve pivoted by increasing a wagon’s ride height and adding plastic cladding to catch the eyes of crossover buyers. It’s not a Volvo V60/Volkswagen Jetta Sportwagen/Audi A6 Avant, it’s a V60 Cross Country/Golf Alltrack/Audi Allroad! 

Rumors of the station wagon’s death, to borrow from Mark Twain, have been greatly exaggerated. Yes, sales numbers have thinned dramatically compared to SUVs and crossovers, but then again, so have those of sedans. Many people still value these vehicles as ideal family haulers, and there is a burgeoning enthusiast culture around them.

With this sentiment in mind Adam Cramer and Tim Alfaro, founders of PNW Wagon Fest, resolved to host a brand-agnostic, station wagon-only car show in the outskirts of Seattle in 2017. Himself a fan of “long-roof” vehicles, Cramer noticed the large number of enthusiastic wagon owners when he launched Avants, a membership community program for car enthusiasts throughout the Pacific Northwest, which he named after the term Audi uses for its wagon range.

Seattle has peculiar taste in cars. Market-research firm Nielsen Scarborough reports that Seattle’s Subaru ownership is more than three times higher than the national average—the grand majority of those Subarus being wagons and hatchbacks. (Nearby mountains and an established affinity for outdoor activities make these vehicles appealing.) Despite the unprecedented amount of wealth that tech companies like Amazon and Microsoft have brought to the Puget Sound region, Seattleites remains a largely understated and modest bunch. A no-nonsense utilitarian ethos thrives here.

An alum of the city’s tech industry, Cramer drives a Cadillac CTS-V. “There’s definitely a wagon culture around Seattle. People like the utility they provide, along with the fact that they can be daily drivers,” he says. “Wagon enthusiasts are not flashy people. They don’t want all the attention, but do like owning and driving something that’s unique. Something that other enthusiasts will notice. When you combine utility with the fact that some of these wagons are performance vehicles, it’s sort of a perfect mix.”

That mix is clearly visible at Wagon Fest. The owner of an Audi RS6 Avant jokes about his ability to transport building materials from Home Depot. Attendees mill about, and gaze longingly at an AMG-powered wagon and the V-12 of a Ferrari FF. They talk to the owner of a ’56 Chevy about his window-mounted swamp cooler, and listen intently about the Mercedes Benz W123 that is about to hit 500,000 miles. “All on the original engine and transmission,” the owner proudly points out. License plates from surrounding states (and Canada) speak to the growing appeal of the event, perhaps due to its friendly and inclusive atmosphere. Some wagons at the show are pristine examples of pricy new models, and there are plenty of bonafide classics. Right alongside them are wagons that have been drastically lowered and stanced; others look to be on the verge of mechanical death, their engines and interiors hanging on for dear life. They all sit side by side as owners and onlookers marvel at the breadth of vehicles on display.

Car culture is evolving, and the nature of many new car shows reflects that transformation. There is an inclusive camaraderie here that is, perhaps, tied with how enthusiasts now communicate with one another. Cramer weighs in: “The internet and social media have changed things. I’m not sure if shows like PNW Wagon Fest would even exist without the ability to reach a wide number of like-minded people. Maybe these pockets within car culture have always existed, but now people communicate more easily. Real friendships and a sense of belonging can come about quickly these days.”

Car enthusiasts have expanded the meaning of “cool.” Today, it includes a growing number of unusual and unexpected cars. How else could one explain Hollywood actor’s Dax Shepard’s 700-hp Buick Roadmaster wagon, or the popularity of YouTube videos about Toyota Previas or Yugos? Even a well-preserved Pontiac Aztek would garner significant attention at a cars and coffee event these days. Vehicles that were previously ignored, despised, or even laughed at are finding fanbases that rally around them.

Cramer’s take on the event’s popularity and growth is also indicative of a new mindset in car show culture. “I want it to grow, I want to get more people and more cars involved. But at the same time, I don’t want it to turn into a commercialized show that requires a ton of management.” Avants, the membership-based club he operates, remains his priority, and Cramer admits that the event will soon outgrow the DirtFish Rally School’s sizable parking lot. The momentum that this event and its counterparts have is undeniable. Enthusiasts like Cramer see the beauty in vehicles that the modern auto industry has effectively forgotten, and if the success of PNW Wagon Fest is any indication, there is plenty of fuel to keep the five-door flame alive.

In the future, perhaps, when locals in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains hear strange noises emanating from the area’s winding roads, they won’t blame Sasquatch or Bigfoot-like creatures. The low rumbles echoing off the moss-covered trails and trees will be the natural call of a different, but no less mythical beast. Once thought doomed, it endured against all odds—the station wagon.

The post In the Pacific Northwest, station wagons are far from forgotten appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Hagerty readers and Hagerty Drivers Club members share their cherished collector and enthusiast vehicles with us via our contact email, tips@hagerty.com. We’re showcasing some of our favorite stories among these submissions. To have your car featured, send complete photography and your story of ownership to the above email address.

Few automakers can claim they helped settle North America before building cars. Studebaker can. Founded in 1852, the company was originally known as the Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company, specializing in wagons, buggies, and carriages. This Conestoga station wagon, manufactured from 1954–55, hearkens back to the horse-drawn, canvas-topped models that forded Appalachian rivers almost a century before this orange beauty rolled off the assembly line. Although Studebaker did not invent the original Conestoga wagon design, it used the name on its combustion-powered wagon to honor the original 18th-century design and give a nod to its wagon-building roots. However, this steel-bodied Conestoga shares more than a name with its wood-paneled forebearer; both vehicles have saved lives.

When a car slammed into owner Keith Wahl and his 1955 Studebaker Conestoga wagon, he naturally stomped on his brakes—but when those locked, Wahl skidded nearly 200 feet and came to a stop perpendicular to oncoming traffic. The car was then T-boned, breaking the driver’s seat brackets and pushing the seat across the cabin and through the passenger door. Wahl credits not wearing a seatbelt for his survival; he picked himself off the ground with nothing more than a generous dose of road rash.

The Conestoga, however, suffered a bit more than a gravel-encrusted scrape. Wahl had a restoration project on his hands.

Every panel on the wagon was damaged—including front and rear chrome, windshield, driver’s side door—since after the wagon was hit it bounced into the center median. Wahl did some painstaking research and found another 1955 wagon. This one, however, didn’t pack his original wagon’s supercharged Avanti-sourced mill; it had a Chevy 350 instead. He considered dissecting the new wagon, scavenging the parts needed, and selling off the more-modern powertrain. However, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to restore not one, but two Conestogas to their former glory.

Seven months later, Wahl is the proud owner of a pair of Pima Red and Shasta White Conestogas. “I’m a lucky and grateful person,” he writes. Wahl’s takeaway from the experience? “Be kind. Drive safe.”

We second that.

The post Rides from the Readers: 1955 Studebaker Conestoga wagon appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In the 1980s, American Motors built some of the hottest 4x4s family haulers on the market. The AMC Eagle is not one of them. While it has the same 258-cubic-inch inline-six that was used as the base engine in the 1986 Grand Wagoneer, and impressive wood paneling and cushy brown leather interior were just an option check away, the AMC Eagle hasn’t yet reached the collectible status of the classic Brooks Stevens SUV. Shame.

Nevertheless, since last year when the Hagerty Drivers Club magazine staff gathered three unlikely off-roaders together for a romp in the desert, I’ve seen several nicely preserved examples hit the market. (It’s unlikely this is a cause-and-effect scenario, more like the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon calling my attention back to these unusual precursors to the modern crossover.) I began to wonder if there were more well-preserved Eagles out there than people might expect. Almost every other wagon from that era got tossed aside in the 33 years after AMC got swallowed up by Chrysler. Yet I swear I’ve spotted quite a few decent examples of the 4×4 wagon for sale over the past year.

An online search for AMC Eagles for sale landed me at the website of Worldwide Vintage Autos in Denver, Colorado. Some of their previously sold inventory can come up in searches elsewhere, and that includes a lot of Eagles. That might lead you to believe, as I did, that they’re an AMC Eagle emporium. If only such a place existed!

It turns out that Worldwide Vintage Autos isn’t the land of oddball AMCs I’d dreamed it to be. I called to learn that they only have two Eagles in stock at the moment and they only sell a couple a year. Further, they don’t seem to be particularly hot sellers. They tend to sit on the showroom floor for a couple of months before being picked up.

The Eagle now, as it did when it was new, is overshadowed by bigger, burlier, truck-based SUVs that grab all the attention. Collectors prefer the International Scout, Ford Bronco, Chevy Blazer, and of course Jeep’s own Cherokee and Grand Wagoneer. Even Worldwide’s inventory can attest to that. Still, someone out there has to also appreciate a groundbreaking car that’s two-thirds as cool for half the price. It’s definitely not setting the collector car market on fire, but a worthy collectible nonetheless. You may want to snap them up while you still can.

The post The AMC Eagle is still not as cool as we’d hoped appeared first on Hagerty Media.

New York City and the surrounding area is a major epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, and hospital workers there have been working overtime to handle the surplus of patients. At the same time, a lot of people aren’t working. Waiters, hotel staff, and, of course, the actors, extras, production staff and service workers that support New York’s prodigious film and television industry have been twiddling their thumbs since film locations shut down in the middle of March.

Paul Brozen owns New York Picture Cars, a small company that supplies vintage cars to productions like Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and HBO’s 1970s drugs and porn drama, The Deuce. He hasn’t been working amid the public health crisis-induced hiatus, but the downtime got him thinking about what he could do to help the people who were putting it all on the line to save lives.

“I realized that the film industry had the ability to feed hundreds of crew and cast on location with a mobile kitchen,” he said. “So my son Liam and I came up with a concept to provide hot meals to-go for hospital staff.”

After Brozen roped the rest of his family—his wife, Ellen, and daughter, Caitlin—into his plan, he got in touch with producers Andrew Saxe and Michael Kriaris, plus other industry contacts, to get the ball rolling. Henry’s International Cuisine and other on-location catering companies agreed to provide, at no cost, mobile kitchen trucks that typically serve food for film and television productions. Next, they started a GoFundMe campaign that, after a couple of weeks, raised more than $90,000 for food and supplies from more than 500 different donors.

Since April 14, they have delivered more than 15,000 meals to hospital workers across 18 different facilities New York and New Jersey, raising over $108,000. The menu has included grilled chicken, flank steak, Italian meatballs on ziti and, as always, vegetarian options.

“After 10 years of being fed in the film industry, I always look forward to a job where I see the Henry’s truck, because I know the food is going to be top notch,” Brozen said, adding that within a few days, word got around among hospital workers that the food was really good.

Brozen has been directing the operation, but it was his network of industry contacts that got him an in with Henry’s. He said there has been a lot of hard work and cooperation that has gone into the project, which they plan to continue until the money runs out.

“A few of the hospital staffers stayed to chat and express their feelings about what the to-go meals meant to them,” Brozen said. “For me, it was proof that the concept was having an impact.”

As an added bonus, Brozen has been using his Hagerty-insured, NYPD-liveried 1985 Chevrolet Caprice wagon to pick up and deliver shipments of food to the kitchen trucks.

“The wagon is a big hit,” he said. “If I was in a 2020 Chevrolet van, no one would notice, but when you’re in a 1985 Chevrolet Caprice police wagon, wow. It brings back a lot of fond memories for people.”

The post Caprice police movie car brings food to New York-area hospital workers appeared first on Hagerty Media.

In 1949, General Motors gave us the two-door hardtop. Six years later, it rolled out the four-door hardtop and the hardtop wagon. Indeed, GM was first with the two-door Chevrolet Nomad and Pontiac Safari, but the me-too brigade came out with four-door hardtop wagons with a bit more utility.

Alas, though manufacturers flirted with that style, the hardtop wagon was not embraced industry-wide as its more common coupe and sedan brethren. With good looks and rarity on their side, they offer something different from the typical collectible—here’s a retrospective on these family trucksters.

American Motors

Yes, it was lowly American Motors Corporation that was first with a four-door hardtop wagon. AMC said of the 1956 Rambler Custom Cross Country Hardtop wagon, “Now you can enjoy all the fun of a fresh-air convertible and the smart, luxurious utility of a station wagon—all in one brilliant automobile.” Wheelbase was a trim 108 inches, but Rambler’s selling point was that it was Rambler-sized on the outside while being king-size inside, so owners didn’t give up much… unless you wanted a V-8. That arrived for 1957 in the form of the new 190-horsepower 250. For 1958, after the dissolution of Nash, Rambler upgraded the hardtop wagon to the Ambassador series, with the Custom Cross Country now on a 117-inch wheelbase and powered by a 270-horsepower 327. Marginal changes arrived in 1959, but the Ambassador had a slight restyle for 1960, plus the standard 327 was downgraded to 250 horses (with 270 optional). With the 1961 redesign, the Rambler hardtop wagon was no more.

Buick

In 1957, Buick offered two hardtop station wagons: the Special Riviera and the Century Caballero Estate Wagons, both of which featured “low-silhouette styling [and] Riviera design” (the latter a nod to Buick’s nomenclature for hardtop). Aside of trim level and equipment, the main difference between the two was that the Special made do with a 250-horsepower 364, while the Century featured 300 horses. Buick continued the pair for 1958, including the same mechanical specifications under the hood, but now wrapped in unique “Air Born B-58” styling with “Fashion-Aire Dynastar Grille.” Buick quietly put its hardtop wagons to rest for 1959.

Mercury

“Dream Car Design” came to Mercury in 1957, “designed and built as a separate fleet of cars, not as pieced together models on a passenger-car shell.” All Mercury wagons, from Commuter and Voyager to Colony Park, featured hardtop styling, with the former two available as both two- and four-doors. “Quadri-Beam” quad headlights became optional mid-year, which was a rarity for 1957. A heavy facelift for 1958 was accompanied by the highest horsepower engine option in the industry: the 400-hp Super Marauder 430. For 1959, Mercury wagons were marketed as “Country Cruisers,” though top horsepower fell to 345. A 1960 redesign brought more similarity to Ford but the hardtop style remained a Mercury exclusive, now available as Commuter and Colony Park four-doors. For 1961, the Mercury hardtop wagon was discontinued. 

Oldsmobile

Oldsmobile wouldn’t let Buick have all the fun in 1957. The Rocket Division offered both the entry-level “Golden Rocket” 88 Fiesta and mid-range Super 88 Fiesta with the same hardtop roofline as Buick but with distinctive Oldsmobile styling and engineering. Both 88s were powered by a 277-horse 371 “Rocket T-400,” with 300 horsepower (via 3×2 carburetion) as close as checking the J-2 option. In 1958, Oldsmobiles featured a bloated, one-year-only design, with the starter 88 becoming the Dynamic 88 with 265 hp, and the Super 88 with 305 hp; both were available with the J-2 option, now with 312 horses. And, like the Buick, the Fiesta hardtop wagon was put to rest for 1959.

Chrysler

For Chrysler’s first year of “Unibody” construction in 1960, Windsor and New Yorker Town & Country wagons featured four-door hardtop styling with soaring fins, a wide trapezoidal grille, and 413-cubic-inch V-8 with 305 and 350 horsepower, respectively. A facelift featuring canted headlights arrived for 1961, with the new Newport (powered by a 265-horse 361) taking over the lower end of the wagon series in place of the Windsor. The fins were plucked for 1962, then a complete redesign courtesy of Elwood Engel delivered a “crisp, new custom look” for 1963. Both the Newport and New Yorker Town & Country hardtops featured similar mechanical specifications from before and, with mild trim tweaks, continued into 1964. With the advent of the all-new C-body in 1965, Chrysler’s hardtop wagon was no more. 

Dodge

Like Chrysler, Dodge also introduced a hardtop wagon in 1960. Both the low-priced Dart series and Matador weren’t afforded that luxury, but the premium Polara was, including a standard 325-horsepower “Ram Fire” 383, with D-500 Ram Induction being an option. The restyled 1961 Polara wagon returned with its hardtop roofline, but power was downgraded to a 265-hp 361, though the 383 and D-500 were offered. When Dodge moved to the B-body platform for 1962, there was no hardtop wagon to be found but, when Dodge introduced the Chrysler-based Custom 880 series mid-year, a hardtop wagon was present. After a handsome 1963 restyle, the Custom 880 hardtop wagon would continue into 1964 and then be dropped.

The post The 6 most interesting hardtop wagons of the postwar era appeared first on Hagerty Media.

The station wagon evolved from a purpose-driven creation—shuttling passengers and luggage to and from the train station—to a body style that the public sought out for its function and practicality. Sadly, some would say that function came at the cost of appearance.

You get to be the judge of that, though. We put out the call, in this Hagerty Forums thread, to show us your wagons. Users obliged, and all condition and trim levels have arrived at the party. The invite still stands to post a picture of your wagon, whether you’ve still got it or not.

Are wagons the best of both worlds, or just a reminder of a time before crossovers ruled the world? That might be a good conversation to start with fellow forum users. We will be highlighting Hagerty Forum posts moving forward, so be sure to chime in on current topics. Don’t hesitate to start your own by clicking on the New Topic button in the top right of the homepage. We want this to be a positive community of vehicle lovers—you’ll fit right in.

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The 31st annual Techno Classica in Essen is one of the largest gatherings of classic cars and associated paraphernalia, which means there ought to be something for everyone. It’s less than a week away, and what am I excited about? A smattering of Audi station wagons, of course. You should be too.

Techno Classica Essen is filled with more than 1200 exhibitors from nations around the globe. A mashup of events like the Amelia Island Concours and the SEMA show, it presents a veritable one-stop shop for anyone who lives in the automotive universe. If the station wagon orbit is where you want to be, Audi is looking out for you at Essen.

The slogan coming from the Ingolstadt-based automaker is “Space Miracle—from the Schnellaster to the Avant.” The focus falls on Audi’s more spacious models and how they trace their roots further back than many recognize. Auto Union was one of modern Audi’s early sister brands, a scrappy company which had to re-established itself in former military buildings following World War II.

Auto Union’s first product? The DKW Schnellaster, a cab-over-engine delivery van powered by a two-cylinder two-stroke engine. The front-wheel-drive layout likely allowed a low floor, which makes for easy loading and unloading of product. Or motorcycles. After all, the small RT 125 motorcycle was the other vehicle DKW was producing at the time. A great pairing.

Far and away the coolest thing that will Audi will be presenting, however, is the F 89 Universal. Any woodie wagon is cool, but this combination of the F8 design of 1939 and the new-for-1940 F9 three-cylinder engine and streamlined bodywork. Aerodynamics dictate the front end, but the back half features beautiful woodwork starting at the hinge of the rear opening doors.

Sadly, I won’t get to see these in person, as I have a “job” and “responsibilities” that prevent me from picking up and heading to Germany next week. If your schedule is more flexible than mine, be sure to check out these cool pieces of Audi history on my behalf. And know that I am jealous.

The post Audi is bringing all of its weird wagon history to Essen appeared first on Hagerty Media.

If the rush of recent interest in 1980s- and ’90s-era “Radwood” cars confirms anything, it’s that people pine after the cars from their youth. And the reality of the market is that there are fewer and fewer people still active in the scene that fondly remember the rockin’ cars of the 1950s from their youth. Younger buyers are into what you’d call traditional classics, but that interest doesn’t extend to much before the ’60s. But as 1950s American metal slowly dwindles in popularity, there is a bright spot, a fantastic vehicle that at least for now appears to be holding its position and at least staying flat: the 1955–57 Chevy Nomad.

An offshoot of the indomitable Tri-Five Chevy, the Nomad was the perfect combination of utility, style, and performance. Still sporting many of the forward-thinking design elements from the earlier concept envisioned by Harley Earl when it appeared in production form for 1955, the Nomad nonetheless shared its chassis with the ’55 Chevy sedan rather than the Corvette that inspired it.

You could get a Nomad with a “stovebolt” six-cylinder, but the big innovation in ’55 was the 265-cubic-inch small-block V-8. Top-spec was the small-block with dual exhaust and a four-barrel carb good for 180 hp, and then ’56 brought two four-barrel carbs and 225. By ’57 there was a wide range of carbureted V-8 engine variants that ranged between 162–270 hp, but the critical upgrade was the new Ramjet fuel-injected V-8, available in 250-hp guise or with solid lifters and 283 hp.

Maybe it’s because people love wagons as do-it-all vehicles, but the Nomad is holding its own. In general, domestic 1950s cars are down 1 percent over the last 12 months and over the last five years have increased just 5 percent. Bel Air Sport Coupes are down 13 percent and Convertibles are down 15 percent, while the Nomad is down just 2 percent. In that same 12-month span, quotes for Nomads are up 6 percent, which is significantly better than the other body styles, which are down 1 percent. Quotes for 1950s domestic cars are down about 1 percent over the last year and off about 6 percent from their peak in 2016.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The number of Nomads offered for sale at auction has jumped 48 percent over the last 12 months, but is still shy of the peak in 2013–14. Last year we saw 57 percent of the Bel Airs (not specific to Nomads) that we inspected earn strong bids, which is a slight drop from 2017 when the number was 60 percent. That said, 11 of the 12 Bel Airs we reviewed at the January auctions were bid to or above market values. In general, domestic 1950s cars performed very well at the January auctions, with 60 percent of all cars offered bid to or above market values.

Nomads are up in price 6.1 percent in the last two months, mostly thanks to a strong auction sale of a mediocre-spec car. Over the last five years, average price at auction is $60,600. Value-wise, the 250-horse and 283-horse 1957 Fuelies are the priciest, and those are very rare. Add a 15–20 percent premium for factory A/C.

That the Nomad is holding strong is a pretty clear example of the Tri-Five Chevy’s strength as an established staple in the collector market, but also of the sheer desirability of a stylish wagon with Corvette power. Some things don’t change. Nomads were cool then, and they’re cool now.

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Looks like station wagons aren’t dead after all. In fact, they’re niche for the rich.

While SUVs are crushing sedans and compacts, U.S. buyers purchased 212,000 new station wagons last year, a 29-percent jump in five years, according to Edmunds. And since most of those new wagons are made by luxury brands (think Jaguar XF S, Volvo V90, Volvo V60, , and Buick Regal TourX), their buyers are more affluent and better educated than SUV buyers.

Groundbreaking news? Not exactly. When you consider that crossovers are actually just taller wagons and station wagons have essentially the same overall cargo area as many SUVs, the difference is slight—yet also huge. In a world where standing out from the crowd means getting a tattoo (like everyone else), owning the latest cell phone (like everyone else), and posting above-plate photos of your “gourmet” meals on Instagram (like everyone else), even the slightest alteration can make all the difference. And a wagon just isn’t an SUV.

“There’s a group of consumers who are greatly interested in the versatility and capability of an SUV, but they don’t want to be seen as someone who just goes with the flow,” Buick marketing director Sam Russell told Bloomberg. “They are almost violently opposed to being mainstream.”

That may account for the sudden interest in wagons, which still amounts to less than 2 percent of the overall market. Let’s face it, wagons have always been decent cargo haulers, plus they handle better than SUVs, yet they’ve been yesterday’s news until recently. We don’t expect the comeback to be much more than a modest one, but it’s still heartening to know that wagons have a pulse.

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Like that oh-so-comfortable recliner in the living room that you can’t even hint at throwing away without incurring Dad’s wrath, some things take time to wear in just right. Cars can be the same way. Sometimes you need to put on thousands of miles before the leather seats soften or the shifter glides perfectly through the gears. But if waiting isn’t your thing, this 1993 Volvo 240 Wagon on Bring a Trailer is a time-honed masterpiece that you can buy right now.  

You’d be excused for thinking the 180,000 miles on the odometer is a red flag, because while the car isn’t factory-fresh, it appears lightly used and very well cared for. At 25 years old, the white paint and black present like a much younger car, with no major damage and only minimal imperfections. A clean Carfax report only confirms this car has been babied from the get-go.

Photos of the interior depict the dashboard and simple switchgear in perfect condition. The leather front bucket seats seem unscathed by years of usage and invite many more miles of road trip comfort. This wagon also includes the always-cool (though, not all that comfortable-looking) rear-facing seat option that we wish would make a comeback in modern cars. Who doesn’t have amazing memories of road trips from back there? Save for the floor mat wear, it would be difficult to tell that this 240 has 180,000 miles on the clock.

Mechanicals follow suit, with the seller’s images showing the 2.3-liter four cylinder nestled in a spotless engine bay. The four-speed automatic is reported to have received a new overdrive solenoid and transmission pan within the last 6000 miles, with an overall tuneup and general maintenance items replaced within the last 10,000 miles. The only mechanical issue noted is light grease and oil seepage from the engine and a few small holes in the tailpipe. For car of this age and usage, that’s pretty remarkable.

Older Volvos are well known for their brick-like construction, and the 240 Wagon is among the most famous of the rugged Swedes. And it’s not just build quality that’s holding up. Our recent market analyses show values of these boxy beauties holding strong and poised to increase. Wagons are particularly desirable, carrying as much as a 25-percent premium over sedan counterparts.

At a current bid of $5750 and 6 hours to go, this perfectly worn Volvo 240 wagon might just end up as one of the better deals of 2018. Excellent, low-mileage examples in the Northwest can go for as much as $25,000, however, with its better-than-average condition, we wouldn’t be shocked if this one crossed the $10,000 threshold. The real question how much is it worth to be part of your collection? Whatever that number may be, you better act soon.

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It’s become a bit of a trope on the internet that real car enthusiasts prefer a station wagon to a crossover or SUV. Carrying the center of gravity lower, along with easily sharing parts with a halo performance model mean the performance wagon can often run rings around taller family haulers. Finding a performance wagon or shooting brake can be tough. Finding the Ferrari 456GT Venice is near impossible.

The Ferrari 456GT Venice is a shooting brake design—though not Ferrari’s first—based on the two-door 456 grand touring car. Sporting a 5.5-liter V-12 from the coupe, the Venice separated itself with the roof extension and rear doors which were penned by Pininfarina. While Ferrari later produced the FF sporting a liftgate at the rear, the 456GT Venice was ahead of its time when produced in the mid-1990s.

There were not many, even by Ferrari standards, with only seven leaving the factory. Just one buyer, a member of the Brunei royal family, purchased six of the seven at $1.5 million each. Rumor says a private collector in the U.K. purchased the seventh, but that has never been confirmed. Number seven could have also served as a test mule for the small production run.

Now that seemingly every manufacturer is in pursuit of the virtually endless money buyers are willing to spend on SUVs and crossovers, a wagon is not the cash cow it once was. Though some brands are holding out and producing cool longroof cars (looking at you Aston Martin, the Vanquish Zagato shooting brake is beautiful), many have left the wagon silhouette in their past. Good thing there are plenty of used options available—well, besides the 456GT Venice.

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A year after my dad died in 2002, I located and bought his old 1955 Ford. I thought I’d keep it forever. The Country Squire wagon was originally purchased by my great-uncle Eddie, who eventually gave it to my father, who sold it in 1993 when he needed some cash. Then, a decade later, Dad was gone, and I went searching for the Ford.

The then-owners weren’t looking to sell the old wagon, but they graciously agreed to after I laid on my sob story. Soon after, I took the Ford on a weeklong road trip to retrace the points of my dad’s life. Back then, I didn’t realize the car and my time with it were a way to grieve, a useful exercise for a guy starting his own family.

My dad used the Country Squire to get to the bus station and shuttle me and my sisters around on weekends. He didn’t drive it because it was cool. The wagon was a tool, a free car for a family that couldn’t afford a second one. As soon as he could, he bought another car, and the Ford sat in the garage until he sold it.

After I bought it, my own family and I drove it in parades and for ice cream runs, but I could tell that my kids didn’t share the nostalgia I had for the car. I understood why. I grew up in the Country Squire, but my kids haven’t. I finally decided to list the Ford when I realized it would be sold at some point, either by me or by my kids after I die. Why not sell now and replace it with a car that my kids might be more enthused about?

First, I called the folks who sold me the Ford, which seemed like the right thing to do. They were no longer interested, but a new buyer emerged who obviously digs the wagon. The thought of him enjoying the car with his friends and family simply felt right. And just like that, my dad’s Ford was gone.

My two sons, ages 15 and 9, already had a replacement in mind: a Mustang. Our $10K budget meant an early one was out of the question, which was fine by them because they had already zeroed in on 1990s Mustangs. In particular, they liked the so-called SN95 generation, produced from 1994–98. I can’t say I’m a fan of that model’s styling, but for the first two years of SN95 production, GT models still had the 302-cubic-inch pushrod V-8, an easy-to-modify engine with piles of available aftermarket parts.

Finding an SN95 Mustang around Detroit didn’t take long. A 40,000-mile 1994 model on Craigslist was pristine, obviously obsessed over by its recently deceased owner. His widow wanted her husband’s car to go to the right person, just as I felt about my Country Squire. I explained that we would not pamper the car like her late husband had but would yank the engine over the winter to have a project and plan a road trip for next spring. There were plenty of burnouts in the Mustang’s future. “Perfect,” she said. “Enjoy it with your kids.”

As I left her house, filled with the new-car glow, I once again realized how much cars are just a sideshow to what really matters. Owning a car helps us make personal connections, both deep and brief, that enrich the human experience. Modern life makes it easy to live in isolation, but the car is an uncommonly effective tool to help us break out of the bubble.

The article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe to our magazine and join the club. 

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Wrap it up, folks. The award for funkiest, coolest, most debonair touring car for sale is a done deal, and this 1965 Ferrari 330 GT 2+2 shooting brake is taking home the hardware. For its capacious cargo area, no less, because it is a breadvan of unspeakable practicality and grace. And in case you didn’t notice, it’s also brown, because there is indeed a higher power and it is generous and beneficent.

This car may have started as a Ferrari 330 GT 2+2 when it first rolled off the production line in Maranello, but in those days it was red and merely a very attractive touring car. Its best years were ahead. Originally delivered to and sold by—wait for it—Luigi Chinetti Motors in Greenwich, Connecticut, Chinetti Jr. bought the car back from the first owner and returned it to Italy so the body maestros at Vignale could get weird with it.

Along with the breadvan body and revised trim touches, the car also received metallic green paint with a gold roof, a new 300-horsepower V-12 engine with three Weber carbs, and a place at Vignale’s stand at the 50th annual Turin Motor Show in 1968. Given that people basically hated the 330 GT Series I’s quad headlights, it’s no surprise Chinetti Jr. and Vignale opted for a set of horizontal bars to hide the original front-end lighting.

Chinetti Jr. held on to the car until 1990, then sold it to a man in France, who started the restoration process. It made the rounds at several shows and concours, before Grammy-winning musician Jay Kay of Jamiroquai bought it in 2011. It changed hands again in 2015, and received that fantastic bronze paint job in 2017.

It’s headed to no-reserve auction at the RM Sotheby’s Petersen Museum sale on December 8. This Ferrari is a pretty special one-off, and RM Sotheby’s says it might even be the last Ferrari to receive Vignale coachwork.

So what’s it worth? In general, quality shooting brake rebodies of vintage exotics can command big bucks compared to the regular versions. Thus far, RM Sotheby’s hasn’t announced a pre-sale estimate, but the #2-condition (Excellent) price for the standard, non-breadvan 1965 Ferrari 330 GT 2+2 is $265,000, while the #1-condition (Concours) price is $315,000. But remember, this is a one-off. It last appeared at auction at Gooding & Company’s 2017 Pebble Beach event, where it hammered not sold at $475,000, well shy of the $700,000 low estimate.

Even better, the car was well cared for but not totally pristine—those seats look like they’ve actually had some butts in them, which means the Ferrari was hopefully driven somewhat regularly. I could keep that streak going, taking it for weekend drives, trips to Home Depot, and obviously to the bakery, where’d I’d fill the cargo area with hundreds of Italian rolls and lay in it like it’s a ball pit at IKEA, because that’s what you do with a breadvan.

All I know is I want it. Real bad.

The post Sorry, but this 1965 Ferrari 330 GT breadvan just wins appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Volvos are known for safety, unique designs, and a certain pragmatism. They are not known for outrageous performance, mentions in hit pop-songs, or making waves in the collector car market. That said, some of these old Swedes might be poised for an acceleration in values.

Volvos can be loosely grouped into three eras. The curvy designs of the 1950s and 1960s, the boxes that began in the 1970s and lasted into the 1990s, and the belt-line shoulder look that started in the late 1990s.

The curvy designs of the 1950s and ‘60s include the frumpy PV-series, the generic European look of the 122-series and the stylish Italian-influenced design of the 1800-series. These have been well established as collectible Volvos and don’t appear to be poised for a jump in values.

The belt-line shoulder look Volvos that began in 1999 with the S80, meanwhile, are still too new to be included in this discussion.

Boxy is beautiful

Right there in the middle, though, the box-era cars are worth a look. The box era was spurred on by safety innovations that started in the 1960s. The first models to sport the new boxy look were the 100-series cars. These were popular but were overshadowed by the ultimate box, the 200-series. Inspired by the Volvo Experimental Safety Car concept of 1972, the 200-series was launched in 1974 and production continued until 1993, during which nearly 3 million were sold. The 200-series is best known for the 240 wagon. In early nomenclature it was called the 245, which stands for 200-series, with four cylinders and five doors.

The 240 was the vehicle of choice of many families in the 1970s and 1980s. First owned by one or both parents and then often given to the kid(s) upon earning their driver’s license, those kids are now older and have fond memories of the boxy bulletproof Volvos of their youth. While buyer interest (as measured by insurance quote activity) among Baby Boomers lies mainly with the 1800 series Volvos, Gen-X and Millennials are approaching 75 percent of all quotes for the Volvo 240-series cars.  

Only 18 months ago, quotes for box-era Volvos were still evenly split between Pre-Boomers and Boomers in one group and Gen-X and Millennials in the other, which is why values for these may soon accelerate.

Values for the 240 are flat over the past two years, but are edging up in the second half of 2018. A condition #3 (Good) 1980 Volvo 245 is only $4000. Late-production cars from the early 1990s in excellent condition can sell for over $10,000 though, and asking prices for the best 240 wagons (in target markets like Portland, Oregon) are over $25,000. Wagons are seen as more desirable than the sedan and can be worth 25 percent more.

While the box-era Volvos made their reputation on reliability and longevity, there are several more highly collectible special models to keep an eye out for. Exotic variants of the 200-series include the 242GT, the homologation special 242 “Flathood”, and the Bertone bodied 262C.

Square yet spicy

The 242GT was available in the U.S from 1978-80 and is distinguished by tuned suspension, higher compression engine, and silver paint with red and black stripes. More legitimate performance arrived with the 242 “Flathood”, a U.S.-market car for the 1983 model year. It featured the turbocharged four-cylinder 2.1-liter engine, but it also had an intercooler that was not available on the standard Turbo model. Officially rated at 162 hp like the standard Turbo, it likely produced a lot more thanks to the intercooler. Only 500 were produced to meet European Touring Car Championship (ETCC) requirements. In addition to luxury features such as power windows, a sunroof, air-conditioning, and optional leather seats, the cars initially had a body kit, but that was removed before they were sold to the public. Volvo cleverly met the ETCC eligibility requirements, but still had a car it could sell.

The Bertone-bodied 262C was produced for the 1978-81 model years, and less than 7000 were made. While the 262C looked almost unaltered below the belt-line, above that, Bertone chopped the roof almost four inches and widened the C-pillar for a superb late ‘70s look. The six-cylinder engine was the PRV or Peugeot Renault Volvo V-6 that produced 125 hp in its initial 2664-cc form, but in later 2.8-liter guise, it made 130 hp. David Bowie owned a black example of the chopped box that sold for $216,000 at a Swiss auction in early 2018, but despite the Bowie sale, values for the 262C have remained flat. A condition #1 (Concours) car is just over $20,000. Meanwhile, a condition #3 car is only $9000.

Some of the more mundane 200-series Volvos, however, are considered rare not because they were built in small numbers, but because attrition tends to thin the herd. According to our records, not one 265 was insured as a collector car as of April 2018.  

Curvy carries a premium

At auction, cars from the curvy era still lead the list of top Volvo prices. Top spot is held by the three-door glass-hatch 1800ES. At the Bonhams Greenwich auction in 2014, a red 1973 Volvo 1800ES with less than 13,000 miles from new sold for $92,400. More recently, at the Bonhams Quail Lodge auction in 2018, a light blue metallic 1972 Volvo 1800ES with 56,000 miles sold for an identical $92,400.

Among box-era cars, the highest prices paid have been for the 262C, when two examples were sold for around $20,000 in 2014. While it seems unlikely that 240-series Volvos will become a regular feature at live auctions, that oversight could be an advantage in finding excellent examples on larger private markets.  

While box era Volvos like the 100-series and 200-series were later joined by the 700- and 900-series cars, it is the 240 that remains the most memorable and the most likely to appreciate soon. Is the market for the 240-series Volvo going to shed its cold pragmatism? It looks like a safe bet.  

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Prior to America’s infatuation with turbocharged, AWD, pseudo-hatchbacks-on-stilts we know as crossovers, we were a nation of wagons. The Ford Country Squire, Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, and Pontiac Safari are just a few of the now-extinct, body-on-frame family haulers that roamed the streets and filled garages end to end. However, you needn’t look longingly to the past, as this oh-so-fresh 1991 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Wagon could be just the ticket to relive the station wagon glory days.

GM launched the new B-body Caprice for 1991, with updated blob-like styling and standard ABS, earning it Motor Trend‘s sometimes-contentious Car of the Year Award. But more importantly, it became one of the last places U.S. buyers could get a full-size, RWD station wagon, and held out until the platform’s minivan-induced demise in 1996.

This particular example is reported to have only 93,500 miles, not bad for a vehicle that’s been in service just shy of three decades. Beyond the limited mileage, this great white wagon has had only two owners. Features include an awesomely-Nineties teal side graphic, plush burgundy cloth seats, cassette player, cruise control, and a 170-horsepower, 305-cubic-inch V-8 mated to a four-speed automatic transmission.

The seller also reports that the Caprice Classic’s low-stress life in the northwestern United States has resulted in absolutely zero body rust—unlike the thousands of B-bodies that lived their lives in the rust belt , where the salt levels on winter roads rival the sodium content of McDonald’s french fries.

With the word out and values increasing on Buick Roadmaster Estates, now might be the time to enter the growing wagon craze. It would appear that the Chevrolet and Oldsmobile counterparts haven’t seen as much movement within the market, but that doesn’t mean a sudden increase can’t happen soon. Plus, is there a modern crossover that seats nine, has a two-position tailgate, and oozes 1990s cool? Not surprisingly, none come to mind.

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When I heard Mecum had consigned a 409-powered 1963 Chevrolet Biscayne wagon to its Indianapolis sale, I had to see if it was the wagon for me. After all, I’m a sucker for old American wagons.

I found the listing. A 409 mated to a four-speed. 1990s wheels. Just needs finishing touches. Then my eyes nearly melted in their sockets after one look at that abominable pink paint job. Oh, the humanity!

There’s more. The engine compartment looks like someone got a bulk discount on AN fittings. The red and blue fittings fill the engine compartment like bracelets on Richard Rawlings’ arms. Offenhauser finned valve covers and a billet serpentine belt setup constitute a combination of old and new that just doesn’t jive. The wheels are peak ’90s and the interior is lacking more than a few items—including the accelerator pedal.

Yet with all that ugly going on, I find myself picturing it doing donuts (or is it brodies?) in a grocery store parking lot. Just this eye-searing wagon belching smoke from the wheelwells and a rowdy exhaust filling the air with raucous noise. I certainly couldn’t run and hide after the fact, but what a way to make a scene, like a vintage Bazooka bubble-gum-hauler gone berserk.

This Biscayne certainly has potential, but the price it realizes at auction just might be its real value—less the cost of a fresh coat of paint.

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As I struggled to lift the iron cylinder head off the Chevelle’s big-block V-8, the last thing on my mind was driving this old Chevy across the country. But I had to admit, my kid had a great idea. “We should drive it on Route 66,” he said, “for spring break.”

Sam, my younger son, is nine. The longest car trip he’s taken is a 10-hour ride to Grandma’s in New Jersey when he got to watch his favorite movies on an endless loop. He doesn’t yet know how fun-filled, multi-day car trips so often descend into misery—with extreme boredom and petty spats—that Hollywood famously parodied the activity in 1983’s National Lampoon’s Vacation. Sam doesn’t realize that his teenage siblings and mother probably don’t want to spend our only annual family sojourn jammed inside a four-wheeled metal can.

The pieces started falling into place when the female contingent of our five-person family fell out. That left Sam, me, and 15-year-old John, who was just old enough to act as relief driver.

The holdout was me, the guy who does at least a handful of solo road trips every year. When I was a kid in the 1980s, my family of five drove up and down the East Coast in a 1979 Chevy Suburban since we couldn’t afford to fly. Sure, there were some bright spots, but the stories we now tell from those excursions are more often about my parent’s epic fights or the time the Suburban vapor-locked on Interstate 95. We now laugh at the pain, but are those the memories I want to create with my sons?

Obviously, no, but here was my chance to include my boys in something I love to do and show them the country outside Ann Arbor, Michigan, perhaps applying lessons from my childhood trips. Plus, this journey was a damn good reason to get our old Chevy back together. Let’s roll.

Since we had only a week’s vacation, driving Route 66 to the West Coast and back was out of the question. Instead, we decided to ship the car to Phoenix, visit the Grand Canyon, and then drive home on as much of the road called “America’s Main Street” as we could handle. Spring break 2018 was the last week of March, eight weeks away, and the Chevelle’s motor was in pieces. A mad rush ensued.

The three of us had taken the engine apart to hop it up with a new camshaft, aluminum heads, headers, and other bits hoping to knock at least a second off the car’s 15.02-second quarter-mile time. Again, an idea from Sam that John and I were eager to indulge. We thought we had the entire winter to finish the job, but then the Route 66 idea popped up. My lack of engine expertise was, to say the least, slowing things down.

So it was a great relief when, a few weeks before departure, the 427 thundered to life, the exhaust bellowing out of the open headers and rattling the neighbor’s windows. The boys and I woofed and hollered like we’d just won the Super Bowl. The untested Chevelle soon rumbled into a trailer and headed west to Phoenix. A shop called Vintage Iron had agreed to fabricate a new exhaust system and store the car until we arrived.

Then my 77-year-old mother called and said she wanted in. Oh, boy. In her youth, Mom was as tough as they come, but 10 years ago, she came terrifyingly close to losing a cancer battle. Furthermore, my Brooklyn-born mom is no wallflower, and we are prone to lock horns. I wanted her to lay eyes on the Grand Canyon for the first time, but I worried about her health, and selfishly, I thought her attendance could add tension. But she’s my mom; how could I say no? I brokered a deal: Meet us at the canyon and hang until Albuquerque.

Finally, on Friday afternoon, March 23, we made it to Vintage Iron. The guys there had rectified several potential trouble spots, but now that the Chevy had an exhaust, they discovered—just before we arrived—a loud ticking noise in the engine. What, I wondered, had I screwed up? As my sons and I stood at the front of the car listening to the tick-tick-tick-tick, the mechanic asked, “What do you want to do?”

I wanted to scream. Hanging around to investigate the noise meant ditching the hard-to-get hotel reservations at the Grand Canyon and opening the proverbial can of worms. That was probably the prudent move. But the noise sounded to me like a loose valve lifter, a diagnosis I confirmed with the mechanic. This loose lifter could, I reasoned, harmlessly tick all the way to Michigan. Or there could be a more sinister problem that could blow the engine. I thought that was highly unlikely, and even if it did happen, I have Hagerty roadside assistance, and we’d have a story to tell. We piled in and left.

“Is the ticking louder?” I asked John. Four days after Phoenix, we were running 80 mph on a congested, dark, and rainy highway outside Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was fairly sure the engine was about to blow.

This long stretch of highway was under construction, the two lanes lined with concrete barriers, no shoulders. The lack of an escape route, fatigue, and the stress of keeping up with traffic sent my mind to dark places. What if the engine quit and I had to coast to a stop in the middle of traffic? Would the other cars see our relatively low and dim taillights? Why hadn’t I recognized that our modified car—it has a five-speed manual, not the original automatic—didn’t have flashers? How could I have been so reckless?

Finally, salvation: The hotel, booked a few hours earlier for the sole reason that it had an indoor pool, came into view. I splashed in with the kids just a few minutes before it closed at 10, washing away the day’s stress and reminding myself to avoid the have-to-get-theres.

So far, a keep-it-loose strategy had worked perfectly. After standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, watching Mom nearly tear up at the grandeur, we had meandered our way eastward using a couple of guidebooks and stopping at places we’d heard about.

Sam wanted to stop at Mary’s Café outside Flagstaff because it was featured in an episode of Roadkill (the Roadkillers went there because the café was a seminal stop in the 1971 movie Two-Lane Blacktop). Sure. While kicking a soccer ball around a park, we met a woman walking her dog who told us not to miss Walnut Canyon National Monument and its mile-long trail among the cliff dwellings. She was right; it is spectacular.

We walked inside carefully crafted stone rooms that were built under natural limestone ledges. The original tribe stayed for hundreds of years and then, for reasons not completely clear, simply left the village behind. Route 66 is filled with similar ghost towns and villages that are empty except for a few holdouts. The decaying motels and unlit neon signs might be viewed as depressing artifacts of an era left behind. Walnut Canyon was a reminder that humans are migratory creatures and nothing is forever.

We arrived in Holbrook, Arizona, with hours of sunlight to spare and checked into the Wigwam Motel, a landmark on Route 66 because the rooms are a cluster of simulated tepees. Every 20 minutes or so a freight train rumbles by behind the complex, so we made souvenirs by putting coins on the tracks and explored the nearby freight yard. John, the teenager, had barely touched his phone since we left the airport, a small triumph in my book.

The following day, our third, we hopscotched to the Albuquerque airport, said goodbye to Mom, and then considered our options over milkshakes at the Route 66 Diner. I hoped to visit the Unser car museum or at least take a tram ride up nearby Sandia Peak, but I was roundly outvoted. Sam was hot for Amarillo, and John simply wanted to keep moving.

That was a challenge. Much of Route 66 is bypassed, unmarked, or slowly deteriorating back into the earth. Staying on it demands constant vigilance as it frequently crosses I-40 and most guidebooks are geared toward westward travel. There’s also the frustration of rolling at 45 mph parallel to the interstate where we could be going nearly double the speed.

Little did we know we had a four-foot Zen master with us. Sam, our purist, kept us on the Mother Road, reminding us to stick our elbows out the open windows, watch the desert roll by, and let the wind rustle our hair. That kid is a true advocate for living in the moment, and John and I followed his lead. We sang the songs on our communal playlist, which we piped through the car’s stereo, secure in the knowledge that no one else could see or hear us.

I’d pull over from time to time and offer John the wheel. In the beginning, he gladly took it, but he couldn’t come to grips with the Chevelle’s antiquated steering. Consequently, his lane changes were jerky. On one unavoidable highway stretch, I looked up from my book and realized John was going 80 mph while passing an equally fast semitrailer on the outside of a downhill curve. He kept oversteering, turning the wheel too much and then overcorrecting. Suddenly, we were in trouble, weaving back and forth at speed and in traffic.

None of us breathed the next few seconds as the road straightened out and John got his bearings. I never said a word, not wanting to add to the pressure I saw on his face. John took the next exit and got out of the car. “I don’t want to risk it,” he said when I later tried to get him back on the proverbial horse, showing a far greater sense of responsibility then I had at his age. Later, I figured out the problem: There’s a beat or two delay between the time you turn the Chevy’s steering wheel and when the car responds. I learned to drive on similar Chevys, but John trained on video games and his mom’s minivan. So when he turned the Chevelle’s wheel and nothing happened, he simply turned more.

I should have given him better instruction, or at least told him to lift off the gas on that curve. My laissez-faire parenting has its downsides. For a second I wondered if we should have rented a newer car, which probably would have been cheaper. But the Chevelle kept us from being invisible travelers and introduced us to people we would not have otherwise met. In Tucumcari, New Mexico, a bearded city worker stopped to ask about the car and then solved the mystery of a creepy abandoned building we had just spelunked. It was, he told us, a creamery with a once hopping ice-cream stand. Gas stops turned into mini–cars-and-coffee gatherings. Finding a key for the Chevy would later give us one of our favorite memories, but first, there was Texas.

The Route 66 motels in Amarillo looked sketchy, so we broke our roadside-motel rule and slept in a high-rise in the sparse downtown. The next morning, while debating what to do that day, I called the operator using the room speakerphone:

“Hi, does the hotel have a pool?” I asked.
“No,” the deadpan female voice replied.
“Are there any public pools nearby?”
“No.”
“Well, we’re just passing through. Anything we should see while we’re here?”
“Hmm, not really.”
“So,” I said, “we should just pack up and get the hell outta here?”
“Pretty much.”

The boys fell to the floor in laughter.

We ignored that advice and stopped at Cadillac Ranch before leaving Amarillo. The 10 old Caddys stuck halfway into the ground were, to me, anticlimactic, but Sam found great joy spray-painting the stripped bodies, a perk recommended by an Amarillo waitress who wore eye makeup in layers, like Tammy Faye Bakker’s. This kind woman gave us latex gloves as we left her diner, a welcomed gesture after our hotelier told us to scram.

The morning of our fourth day on the road was overcast and chilly, the first time we wore our coats. Route 66 to the east was getting more interesting because it was farther from I-40, and the concrete surface and molded curbs looked original. Sam read in the back seat as the miles rolled under us. By midday, I noticed John sneaking more peeks at his phone.

Although there are parts about smartphones I love, I sometimes wish we could put that genie back in the bottle, especially when I’m with my kids. It’s hard to compete with a device that chirps at a teenager constantly to urge him to chat with his friends. We did, however, have a gentleman’s agreement that went something like this: Take some time in the afternoon to catch up, but don’t let the phone be the boss. That seemed to work for a while, but now that I was doing all the driving, John was bored. And frankly, the slow pace on Route 66 lulled me, too.

In Erick, Oklahoma (pop. 1052), 150 miles west of Oklahoma City, a freshly painted sign advertised an airport. I reflexively followed it because it seemed so out of placein the tiny forlorn town. Maybe there was something that could reenergize us, like a plane ride. Instead, we found a desolate and thin asphalt strip surrounded by cotton fields and a couple of tired hangars. We parked on the runway and got out a football and ran around like madmen for an hour, trying not to trip in the gopher holes.

This recreation lightened the mood, and we sat on the hood to debate our options. John revealed his boredom and wanted to go home. Sam announced he’d stay on the road for another month, easy. As the drizzle slowly chased away the body heat we’d just generated—with more rain to come—I admitted that I was closer to John’s camp. With my kids, I’ve learned the leave-them-wanting-more strategy rarely fails, so I suggested a night in Tulsa, then St. Louis, and then home. We all agreed and then I remembered a tip I once read to keep kids entertained during long car trips: a Harry Potter audiobook. I immediately downloaded one to my phone, which kept us all entertained as we headed east to Tulsa and our date with that scary section of interstate.

Once free of Tulsa, we followed Route 66 for one last stretch to Baxter Springs, Kansas, where Jesse James supposedly robbed a bank. We’d been meaning to get a spare key from the start but kept forgetting. A 60-year-old woman at the local hardware store cut the new key while her twin sister stocked shelves nearby. After 10 minutes and $2.73, she handed over the key and told us in a warm Midwestern accent to bring our “vee-hick-cle” by so she could check it out. I can’t tell you why, but we all smiled at this pronunciation and tried to mimic the accent for the rest of the trip. And still do today. (The key worked.)

A massive rainstorm scuttled our plans to ascend the St. Louis Arch. Instead, we made one last stop at an indoor go-kart track in Indianapolis and then let Mr. Potter take us home, six days and 2319 miles since we started.

There’s a lot of parental pressure to make family vacations like nonstop Walt Disney World amaze-fests. Disney would have been easier and probably cheaper, but I saw a greater opportunity in our journey. I wanted my kids to feel the satisfaction of self-determination: We had a dream and put in the sweat equity to make it happen. Success or failure was up to us. For me, this trip was a smashing success as soon as we drove away from Phoenix. We already had a vibrant and uncommon experience together, bonding by way of a big-block Chevy. I hope some portion of their brains, wedged between video games and sports, felt something similar. But who knows?

In the years ahead, what are the memories that will stick with them? Will it be the evening we rolled along the Arizona desert with the sun setting behind us, singing Black Sabbath’s Iron Man? Will it be the Amarillo hardware store where we bought header bolts to replace the two that mysteriously backed out? Did they appreciate how terrific it was that we found fun in a desolate airfield and never got on each other’s nerves? Or will they look back and think of the rough last few hours before we got home, driving in the constant rain and wishing for our beds? Perhaps their memories don’t matter so much because I know our imperfect trip taught them far more than Disney ever could. I was curious to know how they felt about the journey, especially John, but I was afraid to ask. The boys would dutifully respond positively, not wanting to disappoint their old man who they knew went through a lot to make the trip happen.

As the days went by, though, I got some clues. I overheard John, who is on the reticent side, talking to his cousin on the phone, telling stories from the road and laughing. Sam asked me to help him make a slideshow for his class. The three of us continue to retell the inside jokes that only long hours in a car make funny. And then, a week after we returned, I tucked Sam in and noticed three flattened coins on his bedside table. He smiled and said, “They’re from Arizona.”

The article first appeared in Hagerty Drivers Club magazine. Click here to subscribe to our magazine and join the club. 

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We recently visited the Hot Rod Power Tour and came back with a renewed appreciation for wagons. They’re roomier and often have better lines than a sedan, plus many of them feature unique taillights or trim that make them stand out. Wagons have long had a cult following, and you can count several members of the Hagerty staff among the long-roof-loving zealots.

The utility of a wagon makes it the natural choice for a family road trip. You can stow your crew, their gear, and of course a big cooler filled to the brim with drinks and snacks. That explains why we noticed so many on Power Tour. There were two-door Chevelle wagons, Nomads, Vista Cruisers, Roadmasters, Edsel Villagers, and a whole lot from underdog AMC with Hornet, Rebel, and Eagle wagons all represented. We even spotted an LS-swapped BMW 3 Series wagon.

Are one of those aforementioned classic long-roofs your wagon of choice, or are you a fan of late-model muscle like the CTS-V wagon or Jaguar Sportbrake? A Citroen DS perhaps? How about a Volvo Amazon or a VW Squareback? Let us know your favorite wagon. Even though we all know the correct answer is 1957 Pontiac Safari, we’d love to hear your opinion.

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Feeling like the classic muscle car craze—six-figure auctions prices and all—has completely passed you by? Consider this ray of hope: There exists a subset of big-block Detroit thunder that has been largely ignored by the gavel-and-fat-wallet crowd, and although it’s beginning to creep onto their radar, there’s still time to snag one of these bruising burnout machines.

I’m speaking, of course, about muscle wagons. Most people have forgotten that these family-friendly, mid- to full-size haulers often benefited from the same high-horsepower options that were available on sedans and coupes. In fact, automakers often pushed big-block wagons because the extra torque made them more effective tow rigs and cargo carriers, especially when tasked to move an entire herd of unruly kids and exhausted adults to their summer vacation spot.

Wagon weaponry at the drag strip was also something of an open secret back in their glory years, with pros like Tommy Ivo and Don Gay running wagons in NHRA competition.

While far fewer trucksters were ever given the full-on, tick-all-the-boxes performance treatment as their two-door brethren, there are enough of them out there to tempt fans of long-roof style and eight-cylinder speed. Which muscle wagon should you being lusting after? Check out these five appealing choices and decide which one would look best sitting in your driveway with a load of groceries nestled against the tailgate.

1. 1966–70 Dodge Coronet

From 1966 to 1970, it was possible to purchase the Dodge Coronet in wagon form, packing a 383-cubic-inch big-block V-8 under the hood. Mated to a three-speed automatic transmission and churning out at 330 hp and 425 lb-ft of torque (using the gross ratings system of the time), the 383 had more than enough grunt to shunt the relatively heavy Coronet down the quarter-mile in fewer than 15 seconds—only a second slower than the 440 Six Pack Coronet R/T coupes sitting beside it in the showroom. That’s without the full load of nine passengers that this three-row wagon was capable of carrying, of course.

Fun Mopar trivia: the Coronet 440 was actually a mid-level trim for the nameplate and didn’t actually reference the engine size (although a 440 could be ordered outside of the wagon body style with the Coronet R/T).

2. 1970–72 Chevrolet Kingswood Estate

For the 1969 model year, Chevrolet introduced the Caprice-based Kingswood Estate top-of-the-line wagon, but it wasn’t until 1970 that it went all out on muscle. Forget wood paneling, though; these days you should be less taken with the Estate’s luxury than you are in the enormous 454-cu-in V-8 and four-barrel carburetor that it had to offer. Like the Coronet, the Kingswood Estate featured a three-speed automatic (or the option of a three-speed manual), but it blew past the Dodge by way of its 395 gross hp and 500 lb-ft of torque. The 454 would be progressively choked by emissions gear each year (with the Kingswood departing the line-up by the 1973 model year), but it’s worth noting that, as with all of the wagons on this list, go-fast parts are easily bolted on to boost vintage output to equally eye-popping net numbers.

3. 1966–72 Dodge Polara Wagon

For 1966, Dodge actually did a bit of a flip-flop with the Coronet and Polara nameplates, pushing the latter up into the full-size segment while introducing the Coronet as the new mid-size choice. As a result, the Polara wagon gained access to the vaunted 440 cu-in V-8, what with its 350 hp and 480 lb-ft of torque. Although a bit slower than the somewhat lighter Coronet, the Polara party you want to invite yourself to starts with the 1969 model year. This gives you the best mix of style and performance, but sadly, like the Kingswood, it was all over by 1973.

4. 1966–68 Ford Country Squire

Ford’s 428-cu-in V-8 was a lethal weapon in the hands of muscle car tuners, which made the Country Squire that much more appealing to gearheads. Borrowed from the Thunderbird and dumped into the full-size wagon between 1966 and 1968, the 428 was good for 345 hp (a full 70 ponies more than the next-step-down 390) and 462 lb-ft of torque. If you can find one of the rare 428-equipped Squires, you might also luck into one that was equipped with a four-speed manual gearbox instead of the more common three-speed automatic. Top speed for the Ford was a lofty 120 mph, made all the more terrifying by the vehicle’s 4300 lbs of curb weight combined with its standard four-wheel drum brakes.

5. 1970 Buick Estate / 1970–72 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser

This entry is a twofer, giving you a couple of cracks at the 455-cu-in V-8 engine produced by both Buick and Oldsmobile at the tail end of the ’60s. The 1970–72 Vista Cruiser didn’t bother with the six-cylinder entry-level mills found in its competitors, keeping things simple with an all-V-8 line-up topped by a 455 that roared with 390 hp and 500 lb-ft of torque. Car and Driver logged a 14.7 second quarter mile with the Olds when it tested a 1969 model outfitted with 4-4-2 heads from the factory, and 4-4-2 clones are by now semi-common (although only a pair of actual W30-spec wagons ever left the assembly line). Modern builders like Lingenfelter have even used the Vista Cruiser as a platform for over-the-top LS-based hot rods like this 650-hp monster.

The Buick Estate was a just-for-1970 oddball that featured 370 hp and 510 lb-ft of torque from its own 455-cu-in V-8. In fact, that was the only engine it was ever sold with before it stepped up to the full-size Electra platform the following year. Performance was similar to that of the Oldsmobile, with the added cachet of its uncommon single year of production.

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The term “sport wagon” seems like an oxymoron—one being low and sporty, the other functional and boxy. It’s a curious combination, seldom created successfully. Most sport wagons are best forgotten, including Ferrari one-offs, the Jaguar XJS Eventer, and unfortunate individual visions, like the Jaguar XK150 woody.

Perhaps the only classic sport wagon comes from a surprising source—the Swedish firm of Volvo. The company’s curvaceous P1800 sports coupe endured for 12 years with few changes, concluding with the striking 1800 ES wagon, built from 1971–73.

Doomed by 1974’s federal “battering ram” bumper regulations, the short-run ES resembled the rarely-seen 1968–75 British Reliant Scimitar. The ES’s signature cue was its elegant glass tailgate, leading to its nickname in Europe: “Snow White’s Coffin.” With 8078 sold, the ES is among to be the most successful sport wagons ever built.

Volvo’s first attempt at a sports car was the disastrous P1900 roadster in 1955. An early fiberglass blob with a pig snout, it was alarmingly flexible, and one tester listed 29 “must fix” problems. Volvo’s then-new CEO, Gunnar Engellau, took the P1900 on a 447-mile trip and canceled the car upon his return, after only 68 had been sold.

The P1800 bowed in 1961 and derived from Virgil Exner Jr.’s Chrysler concepts built by Ghia in the 1950s. The greenhouse resembled the Ghia Thomas Special and Volkswagen’s Karmann-Ghia coupe, but the P1800 was already dated, with fins, a curved side spear, and “cow horn” front bumpers. Kitschy interior styling featured plenty of chrome and stylized gauges.

The first 6000 cars were made by Jensen, but rust issues forced Volvo to shift production to Sweden, as with the 1800S, in 1964. The model received a shot in the arm when Roger Moore drove one in the British TV series The Saint, which ran for seven years. The network wanted to borrow a Jaguar E-type, but Sir William Lyons refused.

The 1800 proved mechanically bulletproof, with a 1.8-liter B18, four-cylinder OHV engine, front disc and rear drum brakes, independent front suspension, and vault-like unit construction. Performance was comparable to the Porsche 356B, accelerating from 0–60 mph in 13 seconds. It was tough and under-stressed, and an overdrive unit made it a relaxed, high-speed grand tourer. In 2013, retired teacher Irv Gordon, from Long Island, New York, passed three million miles in his 1966 1800S on his way to Alaska.

By the late 1960s, the 1800S looked like a relic, but 1969 improvements kept the 1800 current. A 2.0-liter B20 engine with Bosch D-Jetronic fuel injection cut the 0–60 mph time to 10 seconds. A wood-grain dash gained modern gauges, better seats were fitted, and air conditioning and alloy wheels were optional. The ES wagon joined the lineup in late 1971, offering 50/50 balance, a usable back seat, and increased luggage capacity. Total production of all 1800s reached 47,485, including 8078 ES wagons. Rust issues were much improved in later cars.

The 1800ES is a striking design. Apart from an inexplicable $92,400 paid for a red 1973 ES at Bonhams Greenwich auction in June 2014, even top-shelf examples are affordable for mortals at an average of $42,500. Average value for #3-condition (Good) car is $15,900 according to the current Hagerty Price Guide. Color appears to have a significant effect on value, with yellow, red, orange, and dark green favored, while white, light green, baby blue, and alarming turquoise are less so. Metallic gold, silver blue, and bronze were available, but quickly faded to resemble suede shoes. The factory repainted many cars, and an original metallic car would be a find.

Four-speed cars are preferred, although the overdrive unit is fragile. Automatic transmissions are not popular, but such cars were often bought by older drivers and may have much lower mileage (and a manual conversion is possible, anyway). Unit construction means that rust issues can be profound and bodies should be checked carefully. Examine sills, fenders around headlights and grille, windshield and rear window surrounds, and taillights. Also check chassis outriggers and jacking points. The complicated fuel injection is generally reliable.

Mechanical spares are available, and nearly everything can be found NOS or reproduction. However, some ES-only body parts can be difficult to source. Perhaps the best aspect of an 1800ES (apart from its handsome appearance) is the Volvo loyalty factor. The cars have a cult following, and the reason that prices have not surged more is that may be that few owners choose to sell them. One imagines pipe-smoking professors professing: “Why would I sell it? It’s MY car!”

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With all the holiday activity over the next few months, millions of American families will be piling into their cars for long hauls to visit with friends and family. These days they’re more likely to be loading up a crossover or an SUV with people and stuff, but there was a time when the station wagon was the freeway king: A functional and trusty road trip chariot. Old wagons have seen renewed popularity among car enthusiasts in recent years, and in the classic car market some are experiencing a surge in interest, some have plateaued, and some are charting a steady course.

Vehicle
Buy: 1991-96 Buick Roadmaster	N/A
Sometimes a car is uncool for long enough that it comes back around and into the good graces of enthusiast taste. Just look at the 1991-96 Buick Roadmaster wagon. Its simulated woodgrain sides and bulbous styling never won any beauty contests, and it was built in the years just before station wagons started falling out of favor. Under the skin, though, the Roadmaster rides on the GM B-body platform, which is rear-wheel drive and features a V-8 engine. 1994-96 models even come with the iron-head, police service version of the LT1 V-8 from the Corvette, albeit tuned down to 260 hp from 300. A good sleeper like that can gain a cult following, and we’ve already seen another sneakily swift ‘90s cars surge in interest: the 1994-96 Impala SS. It also rides on the B-body platform and features the same hp LT1 V-8, and it has seen big value growth over the past couple of years. It seems like the Roadmaster may soon get the same due. Buyer interest, as measured by Hagerty’s insurance quoting activity, is up 37 percent for the Roadmaster over the last 12 months. The average quoted value has remained stable, while the increase in interest and the fact that they are most popular among younger Gen X buyers are good signs. Don’t expect fake woodgrain body panels to be the next big collector car craze, but the value outlook appears to be positive for these cars.
Sell:1972-73 Volvo 1800ES	N/A
Volvo’s 1800 may be the prettiest car to ever come out of Sweden, and with their bulletproof engines and relative affordability, they make great practical classics. The ES wagon version that was built for the model’s final two years in 1972 and 1973 is perhaps even more attractive. It’s certainly more practical and also relatively rare. Volvo made only 8,000 compared to about 40,000 coupes. None of this has been lost on the collector car market, and the 1800ES saw a 50-percent growth in value over the past five years. That has slowed to just a four-percent increase over the past 12 months, however, and insurance quote activity has also started to decline. These are pretty typical signs that a model is just about fully priced with no more room to grow.
Hold: 1955-57 Chevrolet Bel Air	N/A
If the Tri-Five Chevy is the quintessential ‘50s American car, then the two-door Nomad and four-door Beauville are the quintessential wagons. As for values, Bel Air wagons have seen moderate increases over the years that more or less keep up with inflation, but there haven’t been any large swings in either direction. It’s the same story with buyer interest, although like other Bel Airs they overwhelmingly appeal to older buyers. Since these wagons are tracking straight, the best thing for owners to do may be to keep driving and enjoying.

*The Hagerty Vehicle Rating system is measured by generations of cars and not body style. Thus we are unable to provide a specific HVR number for the above models.

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Family transporters have gone through plenty of popularity swings over the years. Station wagons used to be the default option for family trips. Based primarily on rear-wheel-drive, body-on-frame platforms, they could tow motorhomes or boats, cruise comfortably, and carry kids with their necessary detritus while providing drivers the feel of a normal sedan or muscle car.

They were popular into the 1980s, when Chrysler’s front-wheel-drive minivan seemingly rewrote the book on suburban fashion. Forgive us for ignoring the Volkswagen van for the purpose of this discussion. We’re fans, but it never sold in huge volume.

Minivans have since ceded ground to SUVs and crossovers as the fashion accessory of responsible parents everywhere, although minivans still sell in the hundreds of thousands every year. Meanwhile, wagons have been relegated to niche status with European brands or disguised as pseudo SUVs with body cladding and a bit of added ride height. The days of full-sized wagons essentially ended in 1996, when the GM B-Body (Caprice and Roadmaster) was discontinued.

Which brings us to today’s eBay find. Classic wagons like this 1966 Chevrolet Impala 396 have always promised the rumble of a pre-emissions-restricted V-8, dosed with bit of added practicality. Usually used and abused during their time as “work vehicles,” nice examples are perhaps even rarer than their original production numbers would suggest.

This one is located in Michigan, but the owner claims its first 40 years were spent in California. It appears to be an honest, rust-free, and slightly modified car with only 80,000 miles since new. The seller adds that the factory air conditioning blows cold, and the original wheels and hubcaps are included (although the car now has Torque Thrust rims with new tires. Always a good choice, no?). There are a few mechanical updates, included hardened valve seats, larger pistons, an Edelbrock carburetor, and electronic ignition promising improved reliability.

This isn’t a show car, there a few dings and bruises, but for family fun in a classic vehicle, this looks like a cool option. With that big-block engine, this could even make a fun tow vehicle for a vintage Shasta trailer. Go ahead and lead the charge on bringing wagons back into fashion.

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A 1986 Volvo advertisement for its 740 Turbo wagon showed the boxy Swede next to one of the decade’s favorite poster cars, a Ferrari Testarossa, with the headline: “Until Ferrari builds a wagon, this is it.” There was, however, an alternative—a 1987 European wagon that actually could match a Testarossa. But there was only one built.

Jonathan Hodgman is the fortunate collector who owns the only AMG Hammer built in the Clark Griswold body style. It is authentic, confirmed by its builders, who in the 1980s turned Mercedes-Benz cars into super-luxury, supercar slayers—right here in the USA.

Some explanation may be needed for the rare car enthusiast who doesn’t recognize the “AMG” or “Hammer” names. Founded in 1967 by two former Mercedes engineers, Hans Werner Aufrecht and Erhard Melcher, AMG was an independent tuner that turned mild-mannered Mercedes cars into road and track warriors. Mercedes took a controlling stake in AMG in the 1990s and eventually purchased the whole company in 2005 to make it an in-house performance division. During its independent years, however, AMG had a significant American footprint.

Some American enthusiasts bought AMG-modified Mercedes cars through gray-market dealers, but then something much better came along. Richard Buxbaum’s Classic Motors, located in the Chicago suburb of Westmont, Ill., offered all manner of federalized European luxury and performance cars not officially sold here by their manufacturers. In 1981, AMG signed Buxbaum as its U.S. agent. Later, AMG North America was formed, with Aufrecht as a one-third owner.

Exotica from Illinois

Buxbaum’s Westmont shop converted many hundreds of Mercedes into AMGs, using parts shipped from Germany, and it also sold performance and cosmetic parts to Mercedes owners. Leading the technical end was Hartmut Feyhl, who would later start his own company, RENNtech. Beautiful wide-body SEC coupes, favorites of Hollywood and sports elite, were among the machines that emerged from AMG North America.

In Germany, AMG’s Melcher had designed a 32-valve, DOHC cylinder head conversion for the Mercedes M117 V-8. This exclusive powerplant would become the heart of perhaps the most famous AMG of all, a formerly mild-mannered E-Class sedan transformed into a supercar-baiting animal. The car had no name until an American journalist pronounced it “as subtle as a hammer.” Since hammer has the same meaning in German and English, AMG made the name official.

Kits shipped from Germany to AMG North America included everything needed to turn a six-cylinder Mercedes 300E into a Hammer: the AMG-modified 375-horsepower 6.0-liter DOHC Mercedes V-8; a tweaked automatic transmission; chassis and driveline upgrades from the larger S-Class; special body parts, interior trim and more. The starting price in 1987 was a rather astonishing $125,000, not including the cost of a 300E. That’s for the basic conversion, and AMG customers usually loaded on the options. One of Hodgman’s other Hammers, a sedan, has paperwork detailing a total cost of $178,000.

Until Ferrari builds a wagon…

Car and Driver declared the Hammer “the hottest passenger sedan in history.” It was an apt description for a midsize car that could blast from 0-60 mph in five seconds flat, burn the quarter mile in 13.5 seconds at 107 mph, and top out at 180. The magazine recorded almost identical results from a Ferrari Testarossa, which, by the way, cost about $60,000 less than the Hammer.

AMG North America would go on to build about 13 of the 30 or so Hammers made. Paul Fingold, a Canadian customer who’d bought numerous cars from Buxbaum, asked for something special for his wife: a Hammer wagon. Even AMG in Germany had not built one, but Buxbaum agreed. The project started with a 300TD diesel wagon, the only Mercedes wagon offered in the U.S. at the time. The conversion was more difficult than the sedan, requiring numerous specialized parts. Hodgman says the extra custom work drove the original price well above $200,000.

Prior to being delivered to Fingold, the Hammer wagon was trailered to a large gathering of AMG owners at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wis., in June 1987. There, a knocking sound was traced to the custom-made exhaust headers hitting the firewall. The V-8 was pulled, and Feyhl climbed into the engine bay to increase clearance by pounding the firewall with a hammer.

There was almost a second Hammer wagon. A 1988 long roof was built with a 6.0-liter version of the Mercedes SOHC V-8, but since this did not have the AMG DOHC engine, it was called the “Mallet.”

If I had a Hammer … or three

Those dents are still there, according to Hodgman, a long-term Mercedes and AMG buff who runs his Mercedes repair business, Blue Ridge MB, from a 13,000 square-foot shop in Liburn, Ga., northeast of Atlanta. About 10 years ago, Hodgman bought his first AMG, a 1986 AMG 560 SEL with DOHC V-8. A year later, a West Coast seller offered a disassembled Hammer. Hodgman has since reassembled the car and drives it.

He’d been watching the wagon. The car went through RENNtech in 1992, when AMG North America veteran Feyhl installed new cams and other upgrades. It was sold again through Beverly Hills Motoring, which sold AMG North America cars in the 1980s. Hodgman bagged it at the 2010 Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale auction.

The auction also included a Hammer coupe, but Hodgman was at his limit with the wagon. Five years later, the coupe’s owner sold it to Hodgman. His Hammer sedan has 23,000 miles, the coupe has 29,000, and the wagon shows 46,000 kilometers.

Having worked on his three Hammers, Hodgman has noted the differences. “No two are alike. You can see improvements made along the way.”

The AMG M117 engine is always a challenge, Hodgman says. Early versions were prone to cam bearing failure, the porous head castings can be leakers, and the complexity of the valvetrain is daunting.

“It takes us two days to do a valve adjustment. It’s an ordeal,” Hodgman says. “But these engines run so sweetly when they’re all dialed in.”

The Hammer wagon’s engine, with RENNtech’s tweaks, produces about 410 hp. Hodgman replaced the 3.27:1 axle ratio with a more highway-friendly 2.24, which turns 3,000 rpm at 90 mph and, he says, helps to preserve the rear tires.

The car is gaining more celebrity status; Mercedes-Benz showcased the Hammer wagon in its Classic Center display during Monterey Car Week 2017. Hodgman considered it a celebrity long before that.

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Station wagons, the midcentury standard of family transportation, were—for a while, anyway—reviled by pretty much anyone in the market for a “cool” set of wheels. The long roof, displaced from its market slot by the minivan in the 1980s, languished in relative obscurity among collector cars until the last few years. As SUVs, crossovers, and even luxury pickup trucks occupy the modern family hauler niche, good ol’ station wagons have made a cameo comeback in the collector car market.

Hagerty’s Brian Rabold, Vice President of Valuation Services and editor of the Hagerty Price Guide, says interest in station wagons is wide ranging, and the appeal goes beyond woodies or ’50s models. Even the massive steel-bodied land barges that were once considered normal enough to include in family comedies like The Brady Bunch and National Lampoon’s Vacation are of interest.

Although ubiquitous during the Cold War era, most wagons were used up and thrown away, leading to some degree of rarity now. According to Gary Quinlan, vice president of the International Station Wagon Club, many met untimely demise in service as demolition derby cars.

If you’re looking to become a wagon owner (or already are one), congratulations. You shan’t be disappointed. These utilitarian vehicles have become cool again, and owning one is like having your classic car cake (thumbs up from passersby) and being able to eat it too (you can bring your family/friends with you). But before we get into what makes a good wagon buy, here’s a little history.

The first station wagons, known as depot hacks, were built to carry people and their luggage home from railroad stations. If you hadn’t already, now you can see the etymology of the name “station wagon.” Wooden-bodied, they offered more seating and cargo space than typical cars. During the interwar years, wagons’ wooden bodies became more curvy and complex, and they were marketed to upscale buyers as the ultimate vehicle to have at a country estate. Whether hunting, fishing, or gardening, there was plenty of space for gear behind the rear seats.

Fast forward to the years after World War II, when American steel production had advanced to a degree that allowed auto manufacturers to construct wagon bodies entirely out of steel. The resulting cars were quieter and more durable. Wooden paneling had become vestigial by the early ’50s, and later in the decade, synthetic. That’s when we began to see woodgrain vinyl sheeting applied to the slab sides of the flashy new fenderless cars. By the time wagons were ousted from the market by minivans nearly 30 years later, not much had changed in the basic layout.

What to look for

Quinlan says that, as with other classic cars, rust is the big thing to watch for. Unless you can do it yourself, body repair is usually very expensive. Paying $1,000 or $1,500 to have a rust-free car shipped to you from the desert (especially if you live in rust-belt states) is worth it when you consider the tens of thousands you could spend fixing a rusty car—and that’s if the damage hasn’t already progressed too far. The drawback for cars from warmer climates, of course, is most have sun damage to the interior.

“You can easily spend $3,000 getting into a new interior,” Quinlan says. “Don’t worry about the carpet. If you get a car with good door panels and seats, you have something to work with.”

He says some collectors buy a rust-free car with a trashed interior, then install the good interior parts from a rusted-out wagon to make one solid car. It’s probably not the approach a vintage Ferrari collector would take, but Quinlan points out that wagon folks typically aren’t part of the big-money crowd and do whatever they can to keep restoration costs down.

Where to look

While eBay prices tend to be a bit high—since sellers often “know what they have” and adjust reserve and buy-it-now prices accordingly—Quinlan says there are plenty of deals to be found on Craigslist and local classified ads. But he says it pays to be patient.

“You have to be kind of careful, because many wagons were run hard. A lot of people bought them as transportation and didn’t really care much about the car, so some of them are pretty well worn out.”

On the other hand, Quinlan says areas of the country with high concentrations of retirees are good places to find wagons. Florida and Arizona can be wagon-rich, as well as the Seattle-Tacoma area. But again, patience and thorough research are keys to finding a good deal. You never know, there may be a well-preserved wagon hiding in your own backyard.

Also consider …

When buying a wagon, don’t forget about parts availability. Quinlan says that from the back seat forward, finding parts for an American wagon is usually as easy as finding parts for a corresponding sedan or coupe. It can be a bit trickier to find parts for the boxy rear, however, because automakers didn’t build as many of them, and there hasn’t yet been an aftermarket industry to support wagons.

As far as price goes, as with any classic, the rarer the car, the more expensive it will likely be. Quinlan says American wagons from the ’50s and ’60s are hot right now. But if you keep tabs on eBay sales, models from the ’70s are definitely warming up. Even last-gasp models from the ’80s are beginning to climb in price. How much you can expect to pay for any given year range depends not just upon rarity, but also upon which generation is coming into money and is eager to snap up some childhood nostalgia. As the needle for middle-aged buyers moves from the 1970s into the ’80s and ’90s, expect to see more emphasis on European and Japanese wagons, which were more prevalent after Detroit pulled the plug on them, post-minivan.

Good bets to hold their value in the coming years are station wagons with unusual body styles, like two-door or hardtop wagons, and road-trip stalwarts like Oldsmobile Vista Cruisers. But regardless of whether or not a particular model is worth a bunch of money, the best wagon to buy is the one you like.

The post Reviled no more, vintage station wagons are more than grocery getters appeared first on Hagerty Media.

We’ll find out as Volvo 240 prices soar

The word “gentrification” has a different connotation depending on your perspective. To a developer, it means changing the character of a neighborhood, enabling real property owners to offer new amenities and charge higher rents. To a displaced long-time resident of a recently gentrified neighborhood, that is cold comfort. The beloved “Brick,” the Volvo 240, now faces the classic car world’s version of gentrification. Accordingly, there will be some sad abnormal-psychology professors and hemp-clothing retailers priced out of the market soon.

The Volvo 240 series came in two-door and four-door sedan body-styles. It was also available as a five-door wagon and it’s the wagon that’s been cherished by everyone from Fairfield County, Conn., old money types to the aforementioned hemp-clothing sellers. To this day, we challenge anyone to pick a neighborhood at random, in either northeast or southeast Portland, Ore., and drive more than three blocks without seeing one.

But all that may be ending, and not as a result of the cars dying off—the 240 is after all, simply unkillable. Production ended in 1993, and Bricks are now starting to appear on collectors’ radar. Station wagons in general are extremely popular right now, and while the Big Three makes are the most favored, Volvo wagons lead the import pack.

Shawn Dougan, who works at Hyman Ltd., one of the nation’s biggest and oldest classic car dealers, bought one personally about 10 years ago. “I bought it because I wanted something iconic but reliable. I drive it almost every day and enjoy a love/hate relationship with the car. I love and hate it because it never breaks. The 240’s reliability gets almost tedious—there’s been nothing to do other than change the oil. It’s one of the last semi-modern cars that anyone can work on, is truly dead nuts reliable, and fun to drive,” says Dougan who owns the final year, a 1993 240 with a rare 5-speed manual transmission.

Dougan is planning on selling his Brick soon, and having seen sales prices for 240 wagons on BringaTrailer.com, he estimates that it’s worth about three times what he paid for it in 2007. What that means to the current clientele for 240 wagons is anyone’s guess. The truly disheveled ones are still cheap, but traditional 240 buyers will have few places to go when the supply of usable, cheap 240s dries up. Maybe a later (but less common) 740 or 940 wagon? But the front-wheel drive 850 that replaced them is a dry well. It doesn’t have anywhere near the reputation for reliability that the rear-wheel drive 240 has. Someone from Ford, (which owned Volvo from 1999-2010), must have said something like “guys, we love those boxy little numbers that you’ve been building since the ‘70s, but seriously, you gotta stop making them last forever.”

What could take the 240’s place? We honestly don’t know. Subaru Outbacks aren’t as simple or durable, nor are they as charismatic, but they do seem like the 240’s logical successor. They’re already supplanting the 240 on the farmer’s market circuit. Still, it’s truly hard to imagine a world in which Volvo 240 wagons are collected, restored and shown, like VW Microbuses are today. Sadly, that seems where we are headed.

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Car guys, real ones at least, hold some sort of strange fascination with the station wagon. Maybe it’s because we all grew up peering out the roof windows of a 1971 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser. Maybe because some are still baffled that the terms “SUV” and “crossover” somehow made it into English lexicon. But maybe, being able to haul at both ends really factors into our car-collecting desires. How about a Corvette-based wagon?

If the Chevrolet Nomad had entered the world mewling and screaming just like it should have, we might’ve seen that. But even the production version, the decidedly not-Corvette-based variant, became one of the most famous wagons ever built.

Barely had that first Corvette itself been introduced in 1953 that GM stylists, under the rule of Harley Earl, started playing around with the formula. What was even more European than a two-seat sports car? How about a two-seat, sports car wagon? Someone at the design studio must have remembered: The Brits call ‘em shooting brakes. A year later, at GM’s Motorama, came the Nomad. It was one of GM’s Chief Designer Harley Earl’s “dream cars.” And it looked much like how you would expect a Corvette shooting brake to look: the front of a Corvette, the back of a sleek, yet practical wagon, and the capacity to carry six people inside – an automotive swiss army knife.

The Nomad joined the fastback Corvette Corvair concept onstage. Both were fitted with Corvette running gear: namely an inline-six producing 150 horsepower, with a two-speed Powerglide. Like all Corvettes, the body was made from fiberglass. The rear glass folded into the tailgate at the push of a button. Inside, blue and white leather dominated, and the rear seats folded down. “Although resembling a Corvette, and in fact using many Corvette components,” writes Bill Bowman for the GM Heritage Center, “the Nomad was built on a modified 1953 Chevrolet sedan chassis.”

Remember, those first Corvettes didn’t sell very well. Only hindsight can illuminate whether an authentic Corvette-based Nomad could have changed the course of its history. Certainly people have sunk vast fortunes into imagining this sort of thing. But Earl loved the concept so much that when the production version rolled out, atop the chassis of the 1955 Chevrolet lineup, not only the name made it in but so did a smattering of styling cues: note the B-pillar of the 1955 Nomad, and the rear chrome spears on the tailgate: “truly a revolution in the rear!” said a 1955 brochure. “True sportsman’s flair!” it continued: “and at no loss to Chevrolet’s utility features! Inspired by the show car that thrilled millions!”

The Nomad arrived just in time to line up with the most famous Chevrolets ever built: the Tri-Five models, not just a midsize lineup but an icon for an entire decade. Maybe that’s why it’s popular, a rising tide and all that. “The Hot One” really did transform Chevrolet in 1955: smooth, clean styling still packed enough flourish to keep things suitably interesting for the Fifties. And with concept-car tricks, the Nomad rose to the top.

Chevrolet’s small-block V-8 sat under the hood, of course, and it was the only engine available on such high a trim. Initially, you got a 265-cid V-8, which eventually became a 283 cubic inch beast by 1957. By then you could honestly tell people your Chevy hauls both cargo and ass. V-8-powered station wagon owners tend to use that line freely.

The Nomad continued as a Chevrolet nameplate all the way until 1972. It received updates nearly every year, matching every changing model in the company’s lineup, even surviving a size increase to the Impala in 1959. No more Bel Air. To paint a picture of a pre-SUV universe, you could conceivably walk into a Chevrolet showroom that year and pick up one of five station wagons: Nomad, Kingswood, Parkwood, and Brookwood, the latter in two- and four-door versions. All befitting one’s, well, station in life.

Yes, there were always other Chevrolet wagons. They carried names such as the Bel Air Beauville, which was a fancy four-doored creation, and the plebeian Townsman and Handyman. But the Nomad had always been on top.

Until 1968, anyway, when it went from the highest trim level to the lowest. Now it was the Chevelle Nomad, and it soldiered on until 1972, as ordinary as could be, even lacking an SS badge to warm it up (except in 1973).

Things get even murkier after this. In 1976, the Vega Nomad debuted, with a forward-leaning B-pillar to kind of drive the point home. One was recently exhibited at the 2011 Concours d’Lemons, which seems fitting for any Vega. A year later, surviving into the Eighties, the Nomad became a trim on the Chevrolet Van, which became a jack-of-all-trades sort of van, the kind we don’t see anymore: both five-passenger seating and the cargo room to haul motorcycles and snowmobiles. It also included two-tone paint, hardly any windows, and occasionally included a folding bed. Finally—a Nomad for true nomads.

Retro fever hasn’t stopped General Motors from trying to resurrect the Nomad, however. In 1999, at the Detroit Auto Show, GM unveiled a slavishly retro Nomad based on a Camaro F-Body chassis, with a 5.7-liter LS1 V-8. Five years later, GM introduced a far cleaner and more handsomely styled Nomad, resembling more of that original Corvette concept than the ’50s dreamboat – this time on the Kappa platform, the same underpinning the two-seat Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky sports cars. Half the cylinders, sure, but all the style. Naturally, old GM being what it was, neither made it into production.

Of course, if a Corvette shooting brake is really your bag, you can always page Reeves Callaway on your Motorola and try to sweet-talk your way into a discount on an Aerowagon.

The post The Chevrolet Nomad was the fancy wagon we all deserved appeared first on Hagerty Media.

It’s getting close to Thanksgiving, which means that millions of Americans are about to stuff their cars full of kids, luggage and casserole before setting off to visit friends and family. While crossover SUVs seem to have taken over the roads, station wagons remain unforgettable. Today’s car market sadly lacks yesteryear’s big, powerful wagons, but back in the ‘60s there were plenty of fast family haulers to choose from. The good news is that most of them are fairly cheap today.

All of these wagons, in addition to extra luggage and passenger room, have at least 300 horsepower and an average value under $15,000.

In most cases with such cars, the wagons are also even cheaper than their two-door counterparts with the same engine, with the exception of the ’64 Chevelle and the ’69 Ford LTD. The best value is the 1962 Chrysler New Yorker Town & Country wagon, which comes out to $19 per horsepower, while the 1970 Buick Estate is the most powerful with 370 hp from its massive 455-cid V-8. Actually finding some of these wagons for sale can be challenging however since few were optioned with big engines from the factory. But if you do find an original one, it’s good to know that buying it won’t break the bank.

The post Graph of the Week: 10 fast, affordable wagons appeared first on Hagerty Media.

As a kid in central Kansas, Kyle Smith enjoyed taking things apart (mainly lawn mowers), which led to an interest in cars. His father owned a few classic vehicles, but the only one Kyle recalls working on was a sun-faded, blue, late-1950s GMC pickup. “I remember enjoying running errands and short trips in that old GMC and watching dad easily drive the three-on-the-tree transmission,” he said. After driving classic cars in high school, Kyle decided to attend McPherson (Kan.) College and study automotive restoration. He started at Hagerty as a summer intern and accepted a full-time position upon graduation. Earlier this year he purchased a patina-covered 1961 Chevrolet Corvair Greenbrier van from a friend in California.

Employee: Kyle Smith

Title: Licensed Sales Agent

Years at Hagerty: 2 1/2

Car(s): 1961 Chevrolet Corvair Greenbrier

Why did you choose a Chevy Greenbrier? In high school I decided to dive head first into a project car and visited my local scrapyard to find one. A 1965 Corvair 500 caught my eye, and the yard was kind enough to drop it off in my driveway. But I was quickly in over my head with a locked engine and rust issues. I was saving money from a summer job and purchased a 1964 Corvair Monza in much better condition. It became my daily driver for a few years until I went away to college and the throwout bearing failed. So I sold both cars and got into motorcycles. I’d been looking for another Corvair when the Greenbrier became available.

Repairs and Modifications: The previous owner lowered and added later model wheels. I’ve installed an electric fuel pump, and I’m finishing a camping set up for the rear cargo compartment.

Hobby activities: I go to the McPherson College CARS show, local shows and events, and I’m hoping to take the van to the Woodward Dream Cruise sometime in the next few years.

Interesting Car Stories: I purchased the van from a former college roommate who lived in Southern California and needed it out of his driveway. I had the van shipped to my parents’ house in Kansas, where it sat from January to May, when I planned to drive it to Michigan. Upon arriving in Kansas, my father told me he hadn’t started it or moved it since it rolled off the shipping truck – and when it came off the shipping truck it was coughing black smoke and would barely stay running. I worked approximately 30 hours to get it in good enough shape that I could confidently hit the highway and drive 1,300 miles. It was a bit of a thrash, but it was a good time in the end and served me no unexpected issues on the way home.

Favorite Drive: Loading up the bicycles and driving to a group ride. It’s always fun to be the oddest vehicle in the parking lot!

Best and Worst Moments: The worst moment was when I realized for the first time that the gas gauge is a quarter-tank off (showing 1/4s left when it’s actually empty). A quarter mile is a long way to push a 4,000-pound van.

My best moment was “showing” the van at the McPherson College CARS show in May, 2015. That event started my journey to Michigan, and it allowed me a chance to meet some great Corvair enthusiasts and catch up with friends and other alumni.

The post OUR CARS: Kyle Smith’s 1961 Chevy Corvair Greenbrier appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Classic station wagons have a certain appeal to today’s enthusiasts that may not have been readily apparent when they were new. They’re often rarer than their standard sedan or coupe counterparts, and depending on who you ask, they often have a more elegant look to them as well. Most of all, though, wagons offer a ton of practicality for a recreational vehicle, so for anybody who’s got the urge to take along a classic for a holiday road trip, you’ll have to leave the Corvette at home and take the Nomad instead.

As the classic car market has grown, wagons certainly haven’t been left behind, and great interest has been shown this year, with a 46 percent increase in the number of quotes so far in 2015. This corresponds with both an increase in values and a greater number of examples coming to market, as over the past five years Hagerty Price Guide values have increased by 16 percent overall for station wagons and the number offered at North American collector auctions has increased by 18 percent.

That most of the 10 most popular station wagons shown here are American should come as no surprise given the popularity of wagons among American families for so many years. The Volvo 1800ES, meanwhile, is a bit of a surprise considering that only 8,077 examples of Volvo’s elegant two-door wagon were ever built, so it seems that the old “Snow White’s hearse” benefitted from Volvo’s legendary build quality and enjoys an unusually high survival rate. Overall, though, it’s the large American wagons from the 1950s-70s that remain popular as interest in classic wagons grows.

The post Graph of the Week: The 10 Most Popular Classic Station Wagons appeared first on Hagerty Media.

There are plenty of people who say that young people aren’t interested in old cars anymore. The older crowd that forms the bulk of attendees of many summertime car shows would certainly confirm that assumption. But there’s at least one man who has 10 examples of why that isn’t true.

Dave Westrate, a 72-year-old retired D.E.A. agent from Oakton, Va., has ten grandchildren between the ages of 6 and 17, all of whom are helping him restore his second 1939 Ford woodie wagon. He said he finished a 7-year restoration of the first one, a standard model, on his own about 15 years ago. This time, he has help, and they aren’t just watching him do the work.

“Working on this car is a great way to interact with them,” he said. “We split the car up and made assignments for all the grandkids to have a part in the process.”

Mr. Westrate requested that the names of his grandchildren not be published, but he gave examples of what sorts of responsibilities he had farmed out to them. One grandson was assigned to the engine, transmission and paint; another to the car’s rear end; two of the girls are responsible for the dashboard, instruments and clock; another of the boys has the steering wheel, horn and brake lights; two sisters are on grille, upholstery and window duty; and the remaining three of his apprentices are divided up among other parts of the car, including gluing finger joints between wooden body pieces Mr. Westrate made in his garage and at a wood shop across the Potomac River, in Maryland.

“They’re all into it,” he said, explaining their enthusiasm for the project. A couple of the teenagers even accompanied him, in the standard, to a car show in Fairfax, Va., over the summer. “They seemed to enjoy themselves.”

The car Mr. Westrate and his grandchildren are restoring is a deluxe model 1939 Ford woodie wagon, and getting it to the same level of perfection as his standard wagon – which has won the Early Ford V8 Club’s prestigious Dearborn Award every year since he started showing the car – has taken, and will take, a lot of work.

The most difficult part about restoring these cars, he says, is the woodwork. Most unrestored woodie wagons are in pretty rough shape. Mr. Westrate says that his certainly were when he bought them.

“When they sold these vehicles, Ford recommended that you sand and varnish the body every year.” he said, “But who would do that? That’s why there are so few of these vehicles left.”

Unlike popular steel-bodied cars, where body parts can be ordered through a catalog, restoring wood-bodied Ford wagons has involved selecting the right wood – high in quality and properly dried – and custom-shaping each piece. Mr. Westrate stressed that every piece has to be worked patiently and carefully if it’s going to fit correctly. The door posts and rear arches, for example, are complex pieces – finger jointed and curved. Any flaw would mean body gaps and doors that don’t close correctly.

“You may have one flat surface to reference everything else off of, so it’s extremely difficult,” he said.

As the deluxe slowly takes shape in Mr. Westrate’s garage, the gleaming standard sits next to it; a testament to the power of patience and attention to detail. When its doors are closed, the latches close with the sort of gratifying click that signals perfection.

Many restorers say to would-be inductees into their very expensive and time-consuming hobby that they should start with a car about which they are passionate. Losing heart mid-project is disadvantageous, to say the least, as the profusion of ads for low-priced, half-finished project cars can attest. They seem to scream, “My mistake, yours cheap!”

But Mr. Westrate said he sort of stumbled upon the woodie hobby about 20 years ago. He had been assigned to the D.E.A. Training Academy, in Quantico, Va., and wanted to buy a pickup truck for the 70-mile round-trip daily commute. It was while truck shopping that he and his wife saw the standard at a used car lot in Leesburg, Va.

“We both really liked the car,” he said, adding that he had never been into classic cars or restoration before that. “When we went to get it and drive it home, the brakes on one side of the car stopped working.”

That, he said, led to a peeling back of layers, so to speak, and his foray into the restoration hobby. It became less about the car than about the challenge of recreating something complex that had been built relatively easily in a factory decades earlier.

“Part of the fun of it was learning how to do that stuff; the mystery of it,” he said.

The deluxe came a couple years later, when, already infected with woodie fever, he found the car advertised in Woodie Times magazine. A retired mechanic from the submarine yard in Groton, Conn., was selling the car along with a number of custom-made wood-cutting jigs and tools.

“That’s where I got the tools to work on the standard,” Mr. Westrate said.

Over the seven years it took to complete the standard, he said he accumulated a pretty robust network of parts sources. There was a hardware supplier named Ed Clarke, in New York, who called himself a “woodieologist.” Mr. Westrate got his floorpan pieces from a Boston-area outfit called Precision Coachworks. There were others, of course, including the high-end wood shop in Chantilly, Va., that typically sold wood used to build gun stocks and musical instruments.

By the time he began work on the long-dormant deluxe, the age of the eBay parts hunt – which hadn’t really existed when he began his first restoration – had reached maturity. But Mr. Westrate said he didn’t use eBay to find parts for either car.

“I’m not opposed to it, but I’ve really never had to look there,” he said. “Having done the standard, I already had the sources to get what I needed. But that’s changing, because a lot of those guys are disappearing.”

Ed Clarke, in his 80s, is retiring. The head of the Boston floorpan connection died this year.

But Mr. Westrate will press on, keeping his grandchildren involved every step of the way. Slowly, the deluxe, once a rusted hulk with a pile of rotten wood on top of it, is taking shape next to the already-finished standard. With the floorpan and chassis nearing completion, he has assigned each of the teenage boys in the group one of the car’s five doors. Many of the wooden body pieces have been roughed out, fined-tuned, fit-tested and fine-tuned again. Others are still taking shape.

Over the winter, he plans to put the body together. By summer, he hopes to get to the mechanical components.

“You can’t rush it,” he said. “It all takes time.”

The post Time and Generations Converge on Two Woodie Wagons appeared first on Hagerty Media.

With winter hitting a fair chunk of the country right now, it seems only right to highlight some of the lesser-known AWD vehicles from our automotive past. Completely by accident, this list starts with fairly attractive vehicles, and it is all downhill from there.

1. Toyota Celica GT-Four All-Trac Turbo: One of my favorite lesser-known AWD vehicles, the Toyota Celica GT-Four All-Trac Turbo was not only attractive but packed a punch compared to the standard Celica seen in many high school parking lots. The intercooled turbo four-cylinder engine was capable of producing over 200 hp and 200 lb-ft. Plenty of power for helping you through some snow drifts on your way to work, or getting air over some crests in a rally stage.

   [Related Article: Winter Wonders: Classics that can handle the snow]

2. Mitsubishi Galant VR-4: Sitting on top of the Galant line, this Evolution predecessor was limited in the USDM to only 3,000 units reaching our shore from 1991-1992. Any owner of the Galant VR-4 will proudly show you the production number plate on the dash. While the stock 237 hp from the factory is nothing to be ashamed of, the tuner favorite 4G63T engine is capable of making this an alarming sleeper car.

3. Honda Civic Wagovan AWD: I don’t know which I love more — the prospect of an AWD Civic (I’m a fan) or the fact that they named this the Wagovan. While you won’t be passing any other car on this list while driving one, you will get a fair number of people commenting, “I’ve never seen one of these.”

   [Related Article: It’s time for winter storage preparation]

4. AMC Eagle Kammback: Any list of odd AWD vehicles is going to include the Eagle wagon we all know and love, but if you want to get even weirder, here is the Kammback. Utilizing the aerodynamics derived from Wunibald Kamm, the Eagle Kammback was available for two whole years. AMC dropped the Kammback in 1983 due to slow sales after only 6,123 made it to the streets.

5. Toyota Previa S/C AWD: Okay, this is not a car, it’s a van. But it’s an undeniably cool van. Toyota decided to produce a jelly bean, then super charge it and push the power to all four wheels. The Roots-type supercharger provided 6psi through the air-to-air intercooler pushing the 2.4-liter four cylinder to an “impressive” 160 hp.

   [Related Article: Let it snow: Classic designs that you don’t have to put away until summer]

6. Pontiac 6000 STE AWD: I know, Pontiac and AWD go hand in h… wait, what? For a whole two years (I’m sensing a pattern here) Pontiac offered the 6000 STE that could turn all four wheels. The fairly standard 3.1-liter V-6 had 135 hp. Not a crazy amount, but still enough to get you down the road in 1988. With hopes to compete with BMW and Audi, the Special Touring Edition fell short in multiple categories.

The post Four-Wheeled Fun: Our five favorite forgotten AWD cars appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Multipla could be built to hold four to six passengers, with different cargo configurations

It is widely believed that Chrysler invented the minivan, but actually, Fiat beat them to it by at least 28 years.

Following the Second World War, Fiat management decided that Italy and the world needed a small, cheap-to-build and easy-to-purchase people mover.

Fiat was no stranger to building small cars. The cute and lovable Fiat 500 Topolino, built between 1936 and 1954, was one of the best-loved small cars of all time.

Having spent some time on the drawing board and in the hands of the engineers, the Fiat 600 was finally launched at the 1955 Geneva Motor Show. This small rear-engine car was powered by a 22-horsepower 633-cubic centimetre engine. The body had two doors and was capable of carrying four adults in reasonable comfort.

In 1956, the Fiat 600 known as the Multipla was launched. The station wagon or van version was basically a stretched version of the car. It shared a number of common sheet metal panels and pieces of glass.

The Multipla was available in a number of seating or cargo configurations. The 4/5-seater version was fitted with two bench seats that folded flat into a bed.

The six-seater had a front bench seat and four individual seats that folded completely flat into the floor making it a great cargo van.

There was also a taxi version fitted with a single driver’s seat. It had a luggage platform next to the driver (similar to the old London Taxi cab), a folding middle bench seat and a fixed bench seat in the back.

In 1960, the Multipla received a larger 767-cc engine producing an additional eight horsepower.

During the 13-year production run 2.7 million units were produced.

The 1998 to 2010 Type 186 Fiat Multipla was not so pretty, it was voted by the Telegraph newspaper as number two of the 100 ugliest vehicles produced and Jeremy Clarkson of the BBC TV show Top Gear describes it as only he could! As a car that looks bonkers.

The post Fiat invented minivan concept with the Multipla appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Station wagons are officially endangered in the U.S., and other than the Dodge Magnum and Cadillac CTS wagon, Richard Nixon was president when the last really cool one was built in America. But a quick look at the cars on this list might make you re-think any preconceived notions that wagons were all “Mom Mobiles” for the pre-minivan generation.

1. 1955-57 Chevrolet Nomad — The iconic Tri-Five Chevy, built from 1955-1957, was likely the post-war high-water mark for Chevrolet. It came in myriad body styles and was available with the first version of Chevrolet’s legendary small-block V-8. The two-door Nomad wagon gives even the convertible a serious run for its money in the cool department.
2. 1959 Pontiac Safari — The 1950s were littered with cool station wagons with over-the-top styling. Our vote goes for the ’59 Pontiac Safari. That was the model year in which tail fins reached their absurd apex. The ’59 Safari actually had two sets of fins on the top and the bottom of the rear fenders, making it look like a Redstone ballistic missile – which was probably not an accident.
3. 1964-65 Chevrolet Chevelle — Two-door wagons are totally impractical to the point of defeating the purpose of having a wagon in the first place, but they look cool. We love the first-generation Chevelle two-door wagon for its handy size, great looks and the fact that all of the performance parts from the two-door SS coupe will fit on the wagon, making it a great sleeper muscle car.
4. 1968-72 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser — The Vista Cruiser and the Ford Country Squire are the cars that immediately come to mind when referring to the “back backseat,” and it was probably in one of these wagons where the classic slow-burn phrase “Don’t make me come back there” was first uttered by an agitated father. The Olds gets the nod in terms of cool, simply because we love the glass roof and GM’s spot-on styling work.
5. 1971-73 Volvo 1800ES — Volvo of the 1960s and ‘70s wasn’t exactly a company synonymous with high style. Frumpy but practical 544s, Amazons and brick-like 240s were the stereotypical Volvos of the day. But the P1800 coupe was gorgeous, and for a few brief model years it was available as a very pretty two-door sports wagon. Nicknamed “Cinderella’s Coffin” by some for their long, flat roof lines and generous glass, these wagons are among the few truly collectible Volvos — and they run virtually forever.

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In the realm of collectible cars, the hierarchy tends to feature roadsters and convertibles at the top, then coupes, then sedans, and finally, wagons.

The idea, of course, is that open cars are the coolest (figuratively, but literally, too), and that as you add roofs and doors and passenger and cargo space, well, how could that be cool?

But the world is full of cool wagons. Here are a few of my personal favorites …

1964–67 Olds Vista Cruiser

The Vista Cruiser was Oldsmobile’s biggest car at the time, and while slightly underpowered with the base 330-ci V-8, a four-barrel variant offered 290 horsepower—enough to move you and the family at a pace. A great feature of the cars (and one shared by the Buick Sports Wagon) was a rounded skylight over the second-row seat that led to a slightly raised roof going back to the rear of the car. A redesign in 1968 also brought new powertrains, and a 455 V-8 was available, as was a 4-speed manual. Prices range from about $6,500 for a driver to $20,000 for tip-top example.

1991-96 Caprice Classic

The fourth-generation Caprice was and is a polarizing design. But as a modern, practical people hauler, the wagon is hard to beat. Especially because the ’94–’96 cars came with a 260-hp LT1 V-8, which most often resided underneath the hoods of Corvettes and police cars. You can find pre-1994 cars for about $3,000, while a used but well-kept LT1 one might set you back about $6,500.

1962–69 Volvo 122

About as far as it gets from the American behemoths above is the Volvo 122. They’re attractive, usable little wagons that do exactly what they’re supposed to do—no more, no less. The 1.8-liter B18 engine will go for a million miles if you let it, and the rest of the car is designed and built to do the same. These things are everywhere on the West coast and perfect for families that don’t have to be anywhere in a hurry. You’ll find running examples for anywhere from $3,500 to $20,000.

There are plenty of great wagons out there to suit your needs, and the three above aren’t necessarily ranked above or below the rest. They just happen to be a few interesting choices. What’s your wagon of choice?

Stefan Lombard is the Managing Editor of Hagerty magazine.

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