My fellow North Americans, the station wagon as we know it continues to be replaced by high riding versions of itself. As a serial car buyer I’m always car shopping for the next thing. Lately I’ve considered replacing my Wrangler Unlimited with something a little more comfortable, a little quicker (300 horsepower or more), has similar or better interior space, and has enough personality to make me look over my shoulder at it as I walk away. It continues to clear that I’d love a new wagon.
Only you can’t buy a new wagon that’s fast unless you’re looking to spend quite a bit of cash. So I’ve made a quick graphic to illustrate that. Here are all the 2024 model wagons for sale in North America. Behold!
Some additional context if I may, since I’m sure people will have comments. This is not necessarily to scale, I’m sure people will parse out that wagon X is technically a little quicker than wagon Y. I did a quick 0-60 search and didn’t dig into each car for the sake of time. Similarly, I’m sure some wagon is technically more expensive than another, I did a cursory base-model comparison via Google as I was working on this in Photoshop.
So save your “well acktshually” comments, this was purely done to point out that the top left quadrant is blank!
It doesn’t have to be, but it would take a non-premium automaker to do it. For example, you can currently get the Subaru Outback with an optional turbo 2.4L 260 horsepower engine. The base engine is slow, 8.7 seconds to 60, and the optional engine is decent, around six seconds. Depending on interior accoutrements and trim a 300 horsepower version could be on sale for around $40,000.
The other option is to wagonize a car that is already good looking, and quick. Imagine a Kia Stinger wagon! I asked the DALL-E3 integrated into Bing to create one, and it’s absolutely stunning.
I know, I know, you’re thinking “Well acktshually, people don’t buy wagons, why would automakers bother?”. And that’s the reality I have to live with, but I don’t have to be happy about it. I’ve only ever owned one wagon out of 30-some (40-some?) cars so I’m part of the problem. Now that I’m in the market the ones I want don’t exist new or CPO anymore.
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