The Rise & Fall of the American Station Wagon

The Station Wagon

The dependable, homely wagon with kitschy wood on the side. Always in the background of every suburban neighborhood, until now, due to minivans and SUV’s, are gone. Sadly, there are currently no American model station wagons in production. The last one, the Dodge Magnum wagon was discontinued in 2008.

In the US the term “Station Wagon” is from the railroad era. Passengers and luggage/freight were hauled in horse-drawn wooden framed buggies from hotel/home to the railway station.

1929 Ford Model A Station Wagon
The “Woody”

As the automobile came to rise, ash, oak and maple wood was used to fashion bodies for station wagons and gave rise to the term “woody”. Wooden frames for station wagons were made by many different carriage makers until Fords 1929 Model A became the first mass produced station wagon. Before then, most station wagons were strictly utility vehicles owned by railroads or taxi companies, now with the marriage to steel chassis, woody station wagons quickly became popular with the public.

1950 Ford "Woody" Country Squire

With the design of Fords chief stylist E.T."Bob" Gregorie (father of the 1940 Lincoln Continental), and the encouragement of Edsel Ford, Ford woodies became the best looking of their kind. Gregorie was the first to work the woody theme with new postwar designs. Before then, woodies were strictly left to the functional aspect. Utilitarian, straight & linear with little room for style. The woody design melded well with the blended fenders and lower, sleeker shape of the 49 Ford. Despite their good looks however, woodies were noisy, drafty and costly to produce. By the early 50’s, costs exceeded profits & automakers ended the wood on steel chassis process. Station wagons continued but as all steel with fiberglass or laminated imitation wood on the sides that we’re familiar with today. Woodies are very popular among collectors today due to the low production numbers. But the wood bodies deteriorate quickly and replacement wood is costly and difficult to find.

Country Squire

Despite the demise of the woody, Ford had great success with its successor, the Country Squire. In production from 1950 to 1991, this supersized family wagon satisfied the needs of millions of families with 8-9 passenger seating, a multitude of powerful V8’s and some interesting innovations to add to their value.

1969 Country Squire concept w/club seating

1962, 1978, 1990 Country Squires

The Squire was produced for 5 generations growing in size and girth in the mid 70’s (National Lampoon’s Vacation spoofing it as the Family Truckster) but trimming down by the early 90’s. The popularity of Fords own minivans and SUVs spelled the end for the squire, and ended production in ’91.

1970 Vista Cruiser W30

Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser

The Vista Cruiser was a high line version of Oldsmobile’s family mover with a higher raised rear roofline incorporating 4 smaller “vista” viewing windows on top front and sides. This unique design feature increased overall roominess of the car as well giving the car a very modern and sleek look that other slab sided steel and fake wood sided cars were lacking. In addition to the roofline, these midsize chassis wagons had a 5” longer wheelbase than other GM intermediates, offering more room and a better ride.

Wozena Cadillac rear "fin" sketch - Wozena '58 Impala rear sketch

Peter Wozena, a GM stylist famous for his offbeat designs and wild Cadillac fin treatments, is known and credited for the famous “bubble top” of Vista (Buick Sportwagon as well). Though there is some dispute on his ideas leading to it. Looking back, its not difficult to remember the famous Raymond Lowey designed Greyhound Scenicruiser buses and see strong hints of the Vista’s bubble top inspiration. These famous aluminum sided buses had a high split level “Vista Dome" roof covering the last ¾ of the vehicle, gave excellent elevated views for riders and were popular icons of 50’s era bus travel.
Its difficult to imagine Bill Mitchell, head of GM design at the time, who had disparaged Lowey’s design philosophy, to allow one of his stylists to “borrow” so obviously from one of his most successful designs…

1953 Greyhound Scenicruiser - inspiration for the Vista Cruisers "bubble" top?

In either case, the Vista Cruiser is one of GM’s best looking station wagons of the mid 60’s to early 70’s. Over 400,000 were sold due to its styling, versatility and wide choice of power. There were even a small number of W30 Vista Cruisers made available from Hurst, essentially 4-4-2 station wagons. But by 1973, due to cost and tooling concerns, the bubble top had vanished on GM’s new redesigned mid size intermediates.

A small vista front window reappeared on the restyled wagon B bodies of 1991, but was discontinued by the mid 90’s. Due to their unique style and features the '64-'72 models are becoming more collectible as station wagons disappear from US roadways.

Chevy Nomad

The Nomad was a Motorama styling exercise lead by GM head stylist Harley Earl. With new head of Chevrolet design Clare MacKichan on board, he and Earl were instructed to liven up the stodgy Chevy line. With the Corvette already OK’d, they set out to make a station wagon (Nomad) and the fastback model (oddly named the “Corvair”) out of the new sports car, they set out to show GM management and Ford what could be done, partly as a prank. To their surprise the Nomad was a hit with Motorama crowds, and was OK’d for production. Much like the other Motorama show car, the Impala, the Nomad concept was moved to a regular car line as GM brass believed it would be more popular on a mainstream car.

1954 (Corvette) Nomad Motorama show car - Nomad show car alongside 1954 Chevy wagon

From this, the Bel Air Nomad wagon gained car features such as a stylish angled B pillar and rear pillars. Matching the theme, the side windows too canted forward with the B pillar, also a veined roof with matching rails on the rear tailgate. The ’55 Chevy was already redesigned for that year, but with the Nomads additional styling tweaks and a new V8, the new car was a show stopper. Even recognized as one of the best designed cars of the decade, the Nomad in original form, was only produced for two years, and was discontinued due to low sales. The name Nomad lived on for years on other wagon models but not with the same style or presence as the original.

One-Offs That Didn’t Make It

Camaro Kammback wagon - Firebird Type "K" wagon

GM made concepts of the Camaro/Firebird as station wagons. Both Henry Haga and Chuck Jordan in the Chevy/Pontiac studios tinkered with the idea of a kammback Camaro and Type K Firebird for the second generation cars. GM commissioned Pininfarina in the late ‘70’s to produce two prototypes. But the production cost and selling price proved too high for their target market. Deco International Corp. did offer Type K Firebird conversion kits for the car.

Mustang station wagon concept

The Mustang went through many concept models before being finalized to the shape we recognize. The Mustang station wagon however was NOT one of them. This was a concept that was contracted to Italian coachworks, Intermeccanica, but never considered as a viable direction for the new pony car. Only two (not confirmed) were created.
There are supposedly still kits to reconfigure 1965 Mustangs to this setup in the aftermarket.
-gumbypiz

Lipstick On a Pig

The Chevy Vega.

The Vega conjurers up memories of noisy motors, warped blocks, high oil consumption, engine fires, early rust/rust prone panel, poor build quality, production plant sabotage & strikes, the list goes on…Who of us didn’t either own or know someone that owned one back then, they were all over the place. Even my Dad bought a LEMON yellow ’74 that year . Nowadays it’s more common to see a Bentley or Ferrari on the road than a Vega.

A quick Google search will find the car in many Top or 10 worst car lists, and maybe rightfully so given its inception and background. But it wasn’t because it was a bad looking car.

Code named XP-887, the Vega started as then GM President, Ed Cole’s pet project. The XP-887 or Vega 2300 was to be Chevys next modern small compact car, a fresh slate after the missteps of the Corvair.

The Vega was GM first attempt at a small car after the Corvair

The first ideas for the car was as a rear engine rotary, but the bad taste of a rear engine Corvair still in its mouth and serious issues with rotary development (NSU’s nightmares with the Ro 80 as an example) nixed those ideas.

Ed Cole Father of the Vega

Ed Cole championed a new all aluminum block impregnated with silicone in the cylinders instead of iron cylinder sleeves (as was standard practice). And as both Chief engineer and company president, no one could, or was going to convince him (the father of the small block Chevy V-8) of this inherent flawed engine design. So Cole was going to get his way, no matter what.

This was the beginning of “committee design” at the General, and Cole quickly set up committees for both engineering and styling as well. As John Z. DeLorean (of the infamous DMC/stainless-steel car fame and head of Chevy at the time) described, it was a car that was "14^th floor engineered " (from the GM building), committee engineered by groups of big-wig executives out of touch with the reality of building a durable car. A project with an engine none of GM engineers supported, and a car Chevrolet didn’t want either, it was forced upon them.

As far back as 1969, two years before its introduction, at its introduction to GM executives, it’s said that the front end of the prototype literally fell off. So the Vega already had some bad karma working for it from the start, all manners of GM executives were walking away from it and its future did not look bright.

So, what do you do with the redheaded child that no one wants, but still have to sell to the public?

You put your best lipstick on a pig, that’s what you do, and that’s what GM did.

A lot of pressure was going on the looks of this car, and the design committee for the styling of the new car was made of legendary names in auto design. Bill Mitchell, Chuck Jordan, Irv Rybicki and Dave Holls were all on board. So they had the talent to hold the pig down, so to speak. The first proposals for the car were contemporary enough, clean pressed “suit” lines that were typical of the Mitchell era, but its front/nose and back were bland. Initially the car had been thought of short wheelbase one, as more of a Nova no frills utilitarian-type and got some uninspired styling to go with that theme.

The XP883 & XP887

But the first of problems for John DeLorean to tackle when he came to Chevy was to revitalize and generate some genuine enthusiasm within his division for the project. By motivating Fisher Body to work with Chevy chief designer Hank Haga, they worked a miracle in modifying the fresh face of the new Haga designed 2^nd generation Camaro F body design cues onto the Vega.

The Camaro’s long smooth nose wide Ferrari egg crate grille and slightly protruding fender headlights influenced from the Facel Vega, are very must present in the Vega. Chevy’s traditional rear pod taillights treatment, typical for the Camaro and the Corvette were stylized an added to the slightly contoured rear of the Vega as well.

Strong hints of Ferrari are seen in both the Camaro & Vega

The Vega was a one of GM’s first of the new vent windowless design, and adding to the more sporting style DeLorean was looking for Haga added functional vents, placed on the deck and at the rear quarter posts.

Styling wise, this little car from Chevy was a good looker, magazines and press all gave the cars overall slightly Italian influenced design thumbs up. Now, no one is going to ever call the Vega a stunningly beautiful automobile, but considering the offerings at the time, the clownish Gremlin, the staid, almost homely Maverick styled Pinto, the Vega was the most handsome of the bunch, hands down.

Vega GT's rolling off the Lordstown, OH plant

Particularly the Vega GT (about 30% of all Vegas sold) and the rare Cosworth Vega looked pretty good for their day, keeping in mind that blow out afros, dashikis, tie-die shirts, Tab, and leisure suits were also popular….

Though the overall result of the Vega was a public relations disaster for GM, and legions of customers probably never returning to a Chevy lot, overall, Chevy sold nearly 2.2 million of these cars, not too bad for a 6.5 year span. By the time the writing was on the wall about the cars troubles, Chevy still moved over 460,000 Vegas in 1974! It was a popular choice, and Chevy kept in pace with the updating of the Camaro, the Vega too incorporating much of the new updates of Camaro too throughout its lifespan.

It’s a tribute to John DeLorean's management skills, Bill Mitchell’s design influence, and the styling genius of Mr. Haga, that the Vega made its way as far and as long as it did. One of the few reasons for the continued strong sales of this car until its last two years.

The Vega is a great example of excellent exterior styling propping up poor or lazy engineering and development. It’s not the first time this has been the case, and certainly won’t be the last.

Lipstick on a pig indeed.