The station wagon is dead. Long live the just-plain wagon, sport wagon, crossover wagon, and sport tourer.
No doubt, vehicle categories are edging ever toward the complexity of even the pickiest urban coffee order. Dealers may very well soon hear: “I'll have a full-sized, flex-fuel, hybrid-drive, all-wheel sport tourer, please.” But even as the jargon expands, a wagon by any other name is still a wagon: handy with kids and groceries, often easier to drive and more fuel-efficient than an SUV, and arguably sexier than a minivan.
More than anything, the proliferation of nomenclature for vehicles that would have once been simply called station wagons has made it nearly impossible to get an accurate read of the sales landscape. Many wagons are treated as versions of their sedan counterparts, rather than as separate vehicles. And newer, wagon-like crossovers are often counted with truck-based SUVs, making it hard to pinpoint a straightforward market segment.
But, in the wake of midsize SUVs' declining fortunes (see BusinessWeek.com, 6/15/06, “Detroit's Midsize SUV Problem”), a host of wagons, 39 of which BusinessWeek.com looked at, have popped up on American shores to provide practical relief. This number of available models helps confirm the renewed viability of the body style, whatever final name it may bear on the dealer's lot.
CHALLENGING SUVs. The benefits of the wagons are mostly obvious. Because the majority rest on the same platform as regular sedans, like Audi's A6 Avant and Volvo's V70, fuel efficiency is often much better than that of comparable SUVs
