Have you noticed the return of a 1950s icon?
The–ugh–station wagon, after almost drawing its last breath a decade ago, is back. Sales are up; market share is growing. More carmakers are producing new models, among them Dodge’s Magnum, which even we old guys recognize as cool. Remarkably, some of this growth is at the expense of monster sport-utility vehicles.
This should bring joy to SUV haters, who may outnumber SUV owners. It may also demonstrate that younger families who are buying station wagons are smarter than older families who made the 1990s the decade of the SUV. Compared with SUVs, station wagons are cheaper, guzzle less gasoline, are less likely to flip over and, in some cases, provide more cargo room. (For example, Volkswagen’s Passat has more cargo space than the Jeep Grand Cherokee, an SUV from DaimlerChrysler, according to Consumer Reports.)
This, however, will not bring joy to 1950s haters, who may outnumber those who actually lived in the 1950s. The station wagon, and the 1950s, stand for everything bad: suburban sprawl, conformity, jingoism, intolerance, materialism and Republicans, among them. The resurgence of the station wagon for ’50s-phobics has to be as painful as being tied in front of a TV set and forced to watch endless episodes of “The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet.”
Me, I couldn’t be happier. Not just because it will annoy the folks I like to annoy. Not just because it means recapturing a part of my childhood and adolescence, when station wagons dotted the landscape. More important, it perhaps signals the glimmerings of a retreat from contemporary excesses.
While the station wagon often is identified with the ’50s, its origins actually go back to the ’20s and earlier. A form of a taxicab, called a depot hack, it basically was a car chassis equipped with a wooden wagon body designed to pick people up at the train station. After World War II, it took off, eventually accounting for one out of every five cars sold. Then began a steady decline, as it was pushed aside by the mini-van in the ’80s and the SUV in the ’90s. When Buick discontinued its Roadmaster Estate Wagon in 1996, it looked like curtains for the station wagon.
My fond memories of station wagons includes one with genuine wooden sides, piloted by friend Steve. Affectionately called “the roach,” it was in an advanced state of decay, with rusting holes in the floor and a gearshift so–shall we say–broken in that Steve could downshift from third gear to second without using the clutch.
Memories of station wagons are not as fond for some of a particular mindset. To them, station wagons were more than a vehicle large enough to haul a family and groceries. They transported retro two-parent families, their statistically significant 2.5 children and all the crass material things they could lay their hands on. More than sedans and coupes, they symbolized the excesses of suburban sprawl, pollution and energy gluttony that supposedly are turning Earth and its atmosphere into a Venusian caldron of toxic gases.
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Nevermind that they also helped unleash a culture that valued the mobility and freedom, fresh air and spaciousness that the suburbs offered. Shamefully, some thought that being able to drive to the grocery was better than having to pack the kids into a big red wagon and trudge five blocks to the market in whatever weather was happening. Brazenly, they committed the sin of actually enjoying the benefits of technology and a healthy economy, benefits that they had been denied by a world war and a dreadful Depression. Yes, by today’s demands, such people still should be living in apartments and plodding through a snowstorm to the store.
Could this mean the return of other ’50s icons–tail fins and chrome on cars, ducktail haircuts, double dates and going steady? Are we to regress to a time when people thought that as a nation we were capable of unimagined achievement and immeasurable good? A time that inspired the civil rights movement? When civility was the norm, not an aberration? When modesty in behavior was cherished, not ridiculed? When a nation was prepared to receive the inspiring words of another icon, John F. Kennedy, that we would go any place and pay any price to ensure to all mankind the blessings of liberty?
I hope so. Considering where we are now, that would be the progressive thing to do.
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Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area writer and public affairs consultant. E-mail: [email protected]