End of the Road: 1991 Mercury Colony Park

The American station wagon is gone. Some European brands will sell you one, as will Subaru, if those cars are really station wagons rather than "5-door hatchback SUVs" or something.
* This was the last full-size wagon from Ford. GM would offer them through 1996. Chrysler last offered a full-size wagon in 1977.
* The biggest Mercury wagon had been called "Colony Park" since 1957.
* Washington state "collector vehicle" license plates are a good deal if you just like driving something old. Anything 30-plus years old qualifies, and they're around $100 and considered to be a "permanent registration". After you buy them you don't have to pay for new tabs every year.

Tweet

1965 Chevrolet Chevelle Station Wagon

Old wagons are rare. Plenty were built, few survived. Go look for '55 Thunderbird. A search will quickly turn up dozens for sale. Then try to find a '79 Olds Cutlass wagon for sale. There aren't any.

A fair number of Chevelle wagons have survived; it's a pretty cool car. This is a base model Chevelle, it is not the more common Malibu trim. It appears the owner has dropped in the top engine from that era, the 396 V8. Pretty sure it did not come from the factory with that.

Tweet

1977 Ford LTD II Station Wagon

When I was a little kid, most families had a wagon like this. Few survived to the 21st century. The "LTD II" was Ford's replacement for the Torino series after 1976. This vehicle is gigantic, but believe it or not, it was built on Ford's "intermediate" platform - smaller than the full-size LTD series. The LTD II wagon was made only for the 1977 model year. Parked just up the street from me in Queen Anne, another Seattle survivor that looks like it just rolled out of the showroom. I love the "shelf" bumpers wide enough to use as a picnic table.

Tweet

1977 Chevrolet Malibu Station Wagon

Kids today strapped into their booster seats will never know the the pleasure of carefree summers spent lounging in the back of a full-size station wagon. The Malibu of course is only "mid-size" and dwarfed by the King of the Road: the Caprice Estate wagon.

 

Tweet

1984 Chrysler Town & Country Station Wagon

Some things get better with age. Chrysler's Town and Country models of the 1940s, cars with beautiful wood bodies, are highly-desired collectibles. On the other hand, cars with fake wood paneling made out of plastic and vinyl? These are not cars that turn heads; at least not in a good way. This car wasn't attractive when new, and now that time has had its way with it, well, the results speak for themselves.

In the 80s, Chrysler attempted to gaslight the public into believing that it's K-car platform could be adapted to pretty much anything. For example, the goofy-looking Imperial of 1989, with a limousine body grafted onto a too-small front-drive platform.

Tweet

1963 Ford Falcon station wagon

Ford President Robert McNamara's, "personal triumph was the Ford Falcon, which an associate described as being just like McNamara, "He wore granny glasses and he built a granny car."" - Thomas E. Bonsall, from his book Disaster in Dearborn - The Story of the Edsel.

Tweet

1984 AMC Eagle station wagon

Sales of traditional sedans have plummeted; now it's all about crossover SUVs. Love it or hate it, the AMC Eagle was the car that popularized the crossover.

There's a good article on curbsideclassic.com about the 1970 AMC Hornet titled, "Today Is the First Day of the Rest of Your Life." The title speaks to the fact that AMC, unable to invest the capital needed to create new car bodies, re-envisioned the Hornet compact first as a "luxury compact" called the Concord in the late 70s, then again as the Jeep-like 4x4 Eagle sedan and wagon in the 80s. The wagon pictured below carried AMC all the way to its demise at the end of 1987.

Tweet

1957 Chevrolet Bel Air station wagon 4X4

Sure, why not?

Tweet