Reports of the death of the wagon are greatly exaggerated*
For several years there have been reports of how the wagon is in terminal decline. But to paraphrase Mark Twain*, they are greatly exaggerated.
Sales in all regions are down, brands have discontinued them, and people all over the world have tended to buy crossovers instead. But the wagon is about to re-emerge, and in the least expected way: this veteran of the old-world is about to have a renaissance starting in China.
The wagon (or shooting-brake, or estate in the UK) is one of the oldest car design typologies. In pre-car Europe station-wagon was the name given to horse drawn carts that hauled luggage from railways stations, and shooting-brakes (or estates) took parties from their country estates into the countryside to shoot game — names then carried-over to cars with similar functions about a hundred years ago, with the wagon then becoming a near ubiquitous variant of its sedan sibling from the 1960s. It was a design-typology with the clear appeal of delivering everything a sedan does but with added practicality, and for nearly half a century they were one of the most common types of car design on the road with only sedans and then hatchbacks out-numbering them.
But for several decades sales of wagons have been in decline as people have opted instead for a crossover. Ostensively the crossover provides the same if not more utility than a wagon, with greater emotive draw too — it reflects an active outdoor leisure lifestyle that is attractive to many people — and typically it is also easier to see out of being taller and having a hood in the driver's sight-line, and it has a smaller footprint for a given cabin volume too. Perhaps most pertinently, for the last twenty five years or so, the crossover has also been a new or contemporary thing in a way that the wagon is a relic of the twentieth century associated with an older generation of people who drove them then — for many western drivers today the wagon is a car design type associated with their parents’ generation. But all that is about to change, for three reasons.
Firstly, the crossover has been extending further and further its original reason d’être as a more car-like take on the separate chassis off-road focused SUV, whilst cars are becoming slightly taller thanks to their underfloor batteries — the difference between what brands call a wagon and a crossover is now wafer-thin if not just semantics. Essentially, the rebirth of the wagon is already happening, it’s just that it has kept the old crossover (or SUV) label.
The second reason is that crossovers are less efficient than wagons being taller (and so with greater frontal area and thus aerodynamic drag) and this is more of an issue with heavy expensive batteries and a market that prioritises range than in ICE days. The wagon is essentially a more efficient crossover.
The third reason that the wagon is set to re-emerge is that the idea of the wagon of being a throw-back car for elders is something crossovers are progressively inheriting. Today’s younger car buyers will increasingly have spent their childhood in the back of their parents’ crossovers twenty years ago — the very few who who what one is little associate it with a previous era. So the negative baggage that wagons have in mature markets will soon be gone, and, of course, in China, the wagon has no history so in many respects stands as a new type of design typology.
So there are three clear factors sitting behind the renaissance of the wagon, but for its second act it will need to do a few things differently, clearly add something to its tangible and intangible offer, and maybe learn something from the success of the 1986 BMW E30 3 series Touring and its kin. These European ‘lifestyle-estates’ pioneered by placing form over function to bypass the central issue most Americans and many in other regions have with conventional wagons being normal sedans made more prosaic still with the addition of a capacious box grafted onto their rear. It must ensure it delivers useful practicality whilst apparently focusing on something far more emotively compelling — a marked but subtle distinction relative to crossovers and what wagons once were. And marketing communications will need to get this new nuance in its story-telling too.
Today’s new Chinese wagons show a reversing of the wagon’s decline. But its renaissance will be truly heralded with new types of wagons being planned and designed right that will capitalise on wagons being a logical extension of the ever more car-like crossover trend, how they are increasingly compelling alternatives to the less efficient taller crossover, and the way that new audiences are ready to embrace wagons for the first time. It is a very valid and exciting design challenge, and, for some brands, a calling. Reports of the death of the wagon are greatly exaggerated.
I absolutely love a wagon. WACAF.
Speaking my language! Very jealous of the epic wagons offered in the UK. But wouldn't you say reports of the death of the wagon are spot on - in the US? Granted, the M5 Touring is coming to this side of the pond, but on the whole, we're in a bit of a wagon extinction event out here :(