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GOOD NEWS! Richer Americans Are Skipping SUVs for Station Wagons

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#1 ·
Richer Americans Are Skipping SUVs for Station Wagons - To wealthier and better educated buyers, crossovers are for Kardashians. These shoppers are looking for Masterpiece Theater.

Interactive charts in above link.

Stately, plump SUVs are running roughshod over the auto industry, crushing sedans, compacts and anything else that doesn’t approximate a 5,000-pound turtle. And yet amid the carnage, the earnest, doughty station wagon has emerged unscathed.

In fact, it’s picking up speed thanks to a crowd of new models. U.S. customers drove off in 212,000 brand spanking new station wagons last year, 29 percent more than they did five years earlier, according to new data from Edmunds.com. While the wagon is still the narrowest of niche products, that growth rate bests some of the industry’s most popular machines, as well as the long tail of vehicle sizes and shapes that are fading fast.

“The winner in the death of the car is the station wagon,” said Karl Brauer, executive publisher for Autotrader and Kelley Blue Book. “You’ve got the car on one end of the spectrum and the SUV on the other; the wagon sits right in between those two.”
White Space

The station wagon has been one of the fastest growing segments in the U.S. auto industry of late, though its market-share is still minimal.

The modest sales increase belies a long-held narrative in the c-suites of Detroit and Stuttgart: Americans don’t buy station wagon—at least not anymore. There’s some truth to that: Even now, the low-slung, family trickster accounts for less than 2 percent of the U.S. auto market.

But in the mad scramble to make and sell SUVs of all shapes and sizes, the sleepy old station wagon started to look like strategic white space. On paper, it’s not as dramatically different from a so-called sport utility as it is in person. Relatively, a wagon can haul about as much cargo as an SUV and, being closer to the ground, handles better and is less prone to tip. Those arguments were essentially worthless five years ago, but today, they make all the difference to the occasional shopper reluctant to be the newest person on the block to conform with the crossover club.

Carmakers, realizing as much, ordered up a few. Volkswagen brought its new Golf SportWagen across the Atlantic in 2015. In the spring of the following year, Volvo rolled out its V90, a slick descendant of the boxy, yuppie tanks that made the brand famous in the 1980s. A month later, Buick pulled the cover off of the Regal TourX, a wagonized version of its mid-sized sedan. And in the summer of 2017, Jaguar pounced with its XF Sportbrake, just a few months before Porsche stretched the roofline on its Panamera, finally giving affluent motorists an alternative to wagons from Audi, BMW and Mercedes.

“There’s a group of consumers who are greatly interested in the versatility and capability of an SUV, but they don’t want to be seen as someone who just goes with the flow,” said Buick marketing director Sam Russell.

“They are almost violently opposed to being mainstream,” he said.
Wagon Train

Before sales cooled a bit, a glut of new station wagons incited a sales peak.

To some extent, the wagon train is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Sure, Americans cooled on station wagons, but sales also swooned because companies stopped making them. It’s the same feedback loop of confirmation bias that perpetually bedevils the car business. Recently, wagon sales have increased in part because there’s more to choose from. Fancy that.

To be sure, it’s still a modest comeback. The wagon momentum slowed slightly last year as the newness wore off of some machines. Starting this year, BMW will no longer offer a wagon version of its 3-series sedan in the U.S., a vehicle that’s long been a paragon of the product. That will be welcome news to Porsche, Volvo and Jaguar, which just started its Sportbrake experiment.

Buick reckons it’s already conquesting some BMW buyers. Half of the people buying the Regal are opting for the version with the big, boxy back-end. But sales were a bit of an afterthought for Buick’s product planners. The TourX was also a marketing exercise, a way to fight its stigma as a company that only makes long, soft sedans for seniors. It also was a tidy way to give Buick a boost in New England and the Pacific Northwest, two wealthy markets where it has historically underperformed.

“As long as you deliver on the styling, I think there will always be an opportunity for wagons,” Russell said. “It’s something different for consumers who are different.”

Indeed, TourX sales have increased steadily in the 12 months it’s been in dealerships. Critically, those who buy it are on average more affluent than people who opt for the Enclave, the largest and most expensive of Buick’s SUVs.

They’re better educated, too.
 
#53 ·
Audi really did make some pretty wagons back in the day. I suppose they still do, though we can't have them. I've come so close to pulling the trigger on a B5 or B6 S4 wagon. I love everything about them except the fact that I know I would have to spend every free moment wrenching on that. A constant project kind of defeats the purpose of a fast wagon- a do-everything daily you can still get your jollies with.
 
#64 · (Edited)


Station wagons of 70's & 80's had a "family hauler" all over it. So blend was its image, no one dares use the term "station wagons"

Jaguar calls theirs "Sports brake".

Audi calls theirs "Avant".

BMW calls theirs "Touring (iT designation)".

Volvo will gladly charge you extra for plastic cladding and call their wagons "cross country". :rolleyes:

Only venerable Mercedes and Volvo calls their station wagons "wagons".

In Europe, Station Wagons still remained popular with the general buying public. That's why only the European brands are carrying station wagons in their arsenal. But even in Europe CUVs are taking over where station wagons once ruled. Europeans hate minivans, but they seem to love the CUVs as much as Americans.

The fact that many European luxury brands still kept bringing wagons over to stateside does not mean wealthy are buying wagons in record numbers. It just happens only European brands have station wagons still available. So, only people who could buy them are old people with money who can afford it.

Says the guy with a five door hatchback. :D
 
#75 ·
My wife despises wagons, how do I change her mind? Hoping to replace her 10 yr old Highlander this year. Not that I have my sights on a wagon, I just want her to open her horizons a bit. I looked at Sportwagens before I got my GTI, she said hell no, they’re ugly”.
 
#89 ·
My wife wanted a SUV with a manual transmission. I suggested a Wrangler, she said no way, too masculine, to much bro love.

We test drove all of the manual SUV/CUV options at the time, she hated them all. Then when we got back from a test drive of a terrible Jeep Liberty, I suggested the Wrangler once again, as there were manual ones on the lot. She drove it and loved it. We're now on our 2nd manual Wrangler, after a brief dance with an Evo.

I'm the wagon enthusiast in the family, she doesn't get it.
 
#109 ·
Lol no they are not.

I work for a private bank, my clients are freaking loaded... they either drive Honda Accords, or Bentleys and hyper cars. No in between.

I make *decent* money and I love wagons, my clients are disgusting rich (private jet owning) and they own whatever they feel like it..
 
#127 ·
We had a Mazda6 wagon that served us well and were disappointed that there wasn't a new one to replace it. Don't know if I'll ever go back, though. If my Accord was totaled tomorrow, I'd certainly check out the Buick, but that's hypothetical. I saw my first new V90 in the wild (non XC) last week and they are sweet. I just wish the big ass sunroof wasn't standard.
 
#138 ·
But hey if the rich are the main folk buying them then parking cost is not an issue.

Since a great majority wishes to be rich and historically mimic their lifestyle maybe we can finally get people to get back into these wagons if we say and show that rich people are beginning to buy them.......profit.
 
#175 ·
Automakers are reinventing wagons behind the scenes, making them stylish, trendy and ridiculously fast even as they crank out SUVs at a dizzying pace. Wagons may never outsell SUVs but an increasing number of consumers are choosing them for their cargo space, good looks, driving responses and anti-SUV 'tude.

The RS 6 rivals nearly any supercar and it delivers more joy and driving pleasure than the majority of sports cars Americans buy, enthusiasts declare. With a top speed of 190 mph and a twin-turbo V8 powerplant that produces 591 hp and 590 lb.-ft of torque, the RS 6 can rightfully crow about its performance stats, handling and versatility. Owners can also analyze and record their lap times (err, road times), tire pressure and brake temperatures with Audi's virtual cockpit. Carbon ceramic brakes, a sport exhaust and black optic accents on the grille and side blades give the RS 6 a menacing, macho vibe too.

"Part of the allure of driving this sleeper wagon is that you press a button and it turns into a high performance race car," Anthony Foulk, product manager for the RS 6, told ABC News. "You can see how many G's you pulled."
 
#176 ·
I'd love for wagons to become a thing again. Time will tell.
 
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#177 ·
This has been the case for years, and exactly why there are no incentives on any allroads. They know the market on that car is someone who can easily afford to buy the car cash and wants what they want.
 
#179 ·
I'm thinking about getting a 2018 Smallroad and turning the S6 avant into one of the classics in the garage (since I wouldn't get much for it selling).
I love a good wagon!
 
#181 ·
I tend to agree. There are a couple of G-wagons near me, but you can't go more than half a mile w/out without seeing a RR/LR product. I've seen some wagons, but no many---and a lot of them are older MB wagons. And not AMG versions either.

There's a certain fringe of people who like/can afford the performance wagon thing, but most still opt for the SUV. I think we're still some time away from seeing anything interesting and fairly affordable in the wagon arena.
 
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