Try our newest merchandise
My dearest station wagon,
We have to speak. It’s not me, it’s… properly, really, it’s me. And everybody else in America. I’m penning this letter as a result of I understand we’re watching your closing act, and I’m unsure we even seen you had been leaving.
You No Longer Make Sense
Do you keep in mind the nice instances? The Seventies and ’80s, whenever you dominated the suburban panorama like a wood-paneled monarch? When households piled into your cavernous cargo maintain for cross-country adventures, youngsters dealing with backward within the way-back, waving at truckers and making faces at different drivers? You had been the Swiss Military knife of automobiles: half minivan, half SUV, all practicality wrapped in a surprisingly elegant bundle. You had been excellent for absolutely anything life threw at us.
However someplace alongside the way in which, America fell out of affection with you. Perhaps it began once we determined that “sensible” was a unclean phrase, or when soccer mothers started craving the commanding view of an SUV. Maybe it was when gas financial system laws made your lengthy, low profile a legal responsibility, or once we collectively determined that something with out all-wheel drive and plastic cladding couldn’t probably deal with a lightweight dusting of snow.
who’s nonetheless prepared to take you to promenade in 2025, I’ve to confess, it’s a fairly unique visitor checklist. The Subaru Outback, bless its rugged coronary heart, retains flying the reasonably priced flag at $29,010, proving that utility doesn’t need to break the bank. It’s the one low cost date we are able to nonetheless afford, like a comforting evening out at Applebee’s, the place you’ll be able to simply put on comfortable garments and throw fries at one another whereas everybody else is of their stuffy fits attempting to impress everybody throughout the road. It’s the sort of date you by no means wish to finish.
Then there’s the Toyota Crown Signia, the brand new child attempting to show wagons could be cool once more — although at $43,590, it’s clear even Toyota thinks wagon patrons have deep pockets as of late. It’s modern, it’s fashionable, and it’s in all probability going to be purchased by precisely seventeen individuals who recognize good design over model cachet.
However let’s be trustworthy concerning the elephant within the room: most of your surviving members of the family are sporting designer garments, and we are able to’t relate to them. The German contingent has gone full luxurious: Audi’s RS6 Avant Efficiency at $126,600 and BMW’s M5 Touring at $121,500 are gorgeous machines that occur to have cargo area, not cargo haulers that occur to look good.
Mercedes went the crossover route with their E 450 All-Terrain at $76,100, principally admitting that even they suppose you could look extra SUV-ish to outlive. And don’t get me began on Porsche’s Taycan variants — beautiful, electrical, and priced like small yachts. The Cross Turismo begins at $111,100 and climbs to $211,700, which is much less “household hauler” and extra “I’ve arrived, and I introduced my natural groceries from Complete Meals.”
Volvo, your religious homeland, continues to be attempting to maintain the flame alive with the V60 and V90 Cross Nation fashions. They perceive you of their Scandinavian bones: sensible, protected, unpretentious. Effectively, principally unpretentious, contemplating the V60 Polestar Engineered prices $71,250. Even the Vikings have gone upmarket.
The reality is, you’ve turn into a luxurious merchandise, like vinyl information or handmade furnishings. You’re not the default alternative for sensible households — you’re the selection for individuals who wish to make an announcement about valuing perform over vogue, even whereas paying vogue costs for the privilege.
However We’ll Miss You All of the Similar
It breaks my coronary heart that we killed you with our personal preferences. We needed greater, taller, extra aggressive-looking automobiles. We needed to take a seat excessive above site visitors, even when it meant worse gas financial system and dealing with. We selected the phantasm of functionality over precise utility, and voted with our wallets for three-row SUVs that most individuals use to haul the identical two youngsters and groceries you possibly can deal with with infinitely higher dynamics and effectivity. You tried to slot in, you tried to turn into who we needed and wanted, but it surely simply wasn’t match. We may simply really feel ourselves drifting aside, the connection fading away. The as soon as easy laughter and keenness now feels strained, like we are attempting so exhausting to determine easy methods to match the puzzle items collectively.
The laws didn’t assist both. CAFE requirements that favor taller automobiles made you an endangered species, pushing automakers towards crossovers that verify regulatory packing containers whereas checking not one of the packing containers that made you particular. It’s regulatory pure choice, and also you’re the dodo chicken of the automotive world — too specialised for this new atmosphere we’ve created.
However I need you to know: a few of us keep in mind. A few of us recognize the way in which you possibly can swallow a fridge whereas nonetheless carving corners like a sedan. A few of us beloved that rear-facing third seat that turned each journey into an journey. A few of us understood that you just had been the proper synthesis of automotive and utility car, earlier than we determined we would have liked to choose sides.
In order I watch your closing curtain name, restricted to a dozen fashions priced principally for the one p.c, I wish to say thanks. Thanks for many years of sensible service. Thanks for proving that helpful doesn’t need to imply ugly (even when we generally made you put on wooden paneling). Thanks for being as comforting as a favourite pair of denims — flattering, versatile, and at all times acceptable.
You deserved higher than this lengthy, sluggish fade into luxurious irrelevance. You deserved to evolve, to thrive, to stay a alternative for normal households who simply needed area for stuff and folks with out having to purchase a car the scale of a small constructing.
However America has moved on, and it appears we’re taking our cargo-hauling must couple’s remedy with a bunch of tall wagons pretending to be vehicles. It’s not the identical, however perhaps that’s what we deserve.
Relaxation in peace, reasonably priced station wagon. You had been too sensible for this world.
Love,
Automotive Lovers Who Typically Apparently Don’t Care About What’s Sensible
P.S. If anybody from Subaru is studying this, please maintain making the Outback reasonably priced. You’re actually the one ones retaining the dream alive for individuals who aren’t funding bankers.
