US car giants General Motors and Chrysler might be sputtering through bankruptcy, but one of the most iconic American-made cars is refusing to be backed down the cul de sac of oblivion. It's the car that Americans like Frank Anastasi have packed the family or entire Little League baseball team into for decades and headed to the beach, the hills, to Grandma's house or a distant away game.
It's the station wagon. "I love this car," Anastasi said of his 1992 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Wagon. "It's the best, most reliable, smoothest-riding car I've ever owned. It's got this big, big engine and it goes like a bat out of hell," Anastasi, who has used his wagon to ferry around half a dozen boys from his son's scout troop and baseball team in a suburb of Washington, told AFP.
"It has a third seat in the back so kids can sit there and look out. They love it, I love it," Anastasi waxed lyrical about the 17-year-old car with 125,000 miles (200,000 kilometres) on the clock and a paint job that still looks like new. Riding in a station wagon is like taking a step back in time to a United States of apple pie, drive-in movies and newspaper delivery boys.
"The front seat is a split-bench power seat with one of those arm rests that folds down. That's about the only option. It's not a very luxurious car but sitting on that front seat is like sitting on your couch," Anastasi oozed. The station wagon has been around since the early days of the US car industry. It got its name from the Ford Model T Depot Hack, which was used in the 1920s to transport goods from train stations.
After World War II, the wagon enjoyed a heyday as America went through a baby boom and needed big cars to transport big families. But then the station wagon began to fade into American folklore as it was upstaged in the 1980s by Chrysler's minivan and then the sports utility vehicle, or SUV, a decade later.
According to Tim Cleary, president of the American Station Wagon Owners Association (ASWOA), GM was the last of the big three American car makers to stop producing station wagons in 1996, but now the workhorse wagon is making a comeback. Car shows are "full of them," said Cleary, but these are not the wagons of yore.
Although they have a third seat in the back, gone is the bench power seat in the front. The vehicles look like a distant cousin, albeit one on steroids, of the wagon of last century and have names like Flex, Magnum and Edge to go with the muscle-look. And they're not even called station wagons any more.
"American car makers are scared by the term 'station wagon'. Young people don't buy 'station wagons'. So now they're called 'crossovers'," said Cleary. But station wagon owners remain fiercely loyal to their fuddy-duddy image cars. Cleary recently drove 2,700 miles to pick through the interior of someone else's station wagon for parts for a vehicle he had just bought.