IN THE 1910s, THE ‘AUTOMOBILE’ WAS A PLUCKY NEWCOMER to the transport scene. If you wanted to go anywhere reasonably far away within Britain or the US, you used a train. To get the bourgeoisie and their luggage from their country retreat to the railway station, companies adapted a rudimentary car chassis with boxier bodies bolted on top.
Logically, the British called these workhorses ‘estate cars’. The Americans termed theirs ‘depot hacks’, but that morphed into ‘station wagons’. And that is how – not for the last time – two nations divided by a common language came up with completely different names for the same thing. You say tom-A-to, we say estate. And they’re trousers, not pants.
For most of the following century, the estate car did its duty. Part tool, part family pet, it obediently carried you, your beloved, your offspring and anything they required from A to B and back. Boots grew and shrunk. Doors and seats were added, or taken away. But the versatile brilliance of the wagon – the Swiss army knife of motoring – never diminished. Not here, anyway.
In America, where the SUV gold rush began, the wagon has been under siege since the early Nineties. Once, every single manufacturer from AMC to Oldsmobile, Plymouth and Pontiac made a wagon. Nowadays, none of those brands even exist. And do you know how many estate models are offered by the combined might of Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Ford, Dodge Lincoln today,
