Transporting families has been a problem to overcome from
the beginning of long-distance traveling. Pioneering settlers struggled
westward in covered wagons. With the advent of the car, carting around loved ones and offspring
slowly became more civilized; however the massive boom in family population
following the end of World War II led automakers to rethink traditional sedans
into more efficient station wagons.
Station wagons began as just that, motorized wagons that shuttled people and luggage from train stations; a railroad taxi. Many were built on pickup truck chassis and were rudimentary in their construction. By the mid 1930’s the wood-paneled wagon had gained in popularity among the wealthy as it was hand built and usually the most expensive vehicle in the showroom. Following World War II though, the wagon gained rapidly in popularity as it combined practical hauling capabilities with convenient family transport. The Baby Boom resulting from the returning soldiers was not limited to the bedroom. The economy was at a peak. Of the 7.5 million cars sold new in 1954, for instance, 99.93 percent were made in America by Americans. A definite benefit from the war was the advancement in steel production that led to more easily mass-producible station wagons.
Station wagons began as just that, motorized wagons that shuttled people and luggage from train stations; a railroad taxi. Many were built on pickup truck chassis and were rudimentary in their construction. By the mid 1930’s the wood-paneled wagon had gained in popularity among the wealthy as it was hand built and usually the most expensive vehicle in the showroom. Following World War II though, the wagon gained rapidly in popularity as it combined practical hauling capabilities with convenient family transport. The Baby Boom resulting from the returning soldiers was not limited to the bedroom. The economy was at a peak. Of the 7.5 million cars sold new in 1954, for instance, 99.93 percent were made in America by Americans. A definite benefit from the war was the advancement in steel production that led to more easily mass-producible station wagons.
For
several years following the war, large sedans generally provided the necessary
transport needs for most American families. As the 1950s began though, the
trend of migration to the suburbs brought on a new need for not only transport,
but stylish, affordable and practical ways to take the kids and the kitchen
sink along. That and the development of faux wood trim to maintain the exclusivity
of the woody wagons led to massive sales figures. In 1950, Ford and Mercury
still offered the real-wood wagon, while General Motors offered imitation wood
on Chevrolet models and small real-wood accents on Pontiac and Oldsmobile
models. All models came in both six and eight passenger versions, and a top of
the line wagon was always the most expensive vehicle in a lineup. For example, a top of the line Buick
Roadmaster Riviera cost $3044, while a Roadmaster Wagon was over $700
more. As consumers demanded more
choices, smaller two door wagons and alternatives appeared. Some beginnings of crossovers came with the
Kaiser Vagabond, which combined the lower tailgate of a wagon with the body of
a sedan. As the 1950s wore on and many families owned more than one car, the
wagon became an ideal way to transport the children and all that goes with them.
Advertising continued to push for ownership of twin Fords – and claimed that
more than 300,000 families already fit that category. Today’s Mom might dispute
the claim that she “looks and feels as young as the fresh new lines of her
Ford.” The car had become the ultimate in living the American dream:
Only one thing exceeded America’s infatuation with the
television and that was its love of the automobile. Never has a country gone more car-giddy than the
U.S. did in the 1950s. When the war ended, there were only thirty million cars
on American roads, roughly the same number as had existed in the 1920s, but
then things took off in a big way. Over the next four decades, as a writer for The New York Times put it, the country
“paved 42,798 miles of Interstate highway, bought 300 million cars, and went
for a ride.” The number of new cars bought by Americans went from just 69
thousand in 1945 to five million four years later. By the mid-fifties Americans
were buying eight million new cars a year (this in a nation of approximately 40
million households. They not only wanted to, they had to. Under president Eisenhower, America spent three-quarters of
federal transportation dollars on building highways, and less than one percent
on mass transit. If you wanted to get anywhere at all, increasingly you had to
do so in your own car. By the middle of the 1950s America was already becoming
a two-car nation. As a Chevrolet ad of 1956 exulted: “The family with two cars
gets twice as many chores completed, so there’s more leisure time to enjoy
together!”
Even the names went
from wagons to the more refined and up market with ‘Caballero’ for Buick, ‘Nomad,’
‘Townsman,’ ‘Brookwood,’ and ‘Kingswood,’ for Chevrolet, ‘Fiesta,’ for
Oldsmobile, ‘Safari,’ for Pontiac, ‘Shopper,’ or ‘Explorer’ for DeSoto,
‘Sierra,’ for Dodge, ‘Suburban’ for Plymouth, ‘Country Squire,’ ‘Ranch Wagon,’
and ‘Country Sedan’ for Ford, ‘Colony Park’ for Mercury, and ‘Villager’ and
‘Bermuda’ for Edsel.
They looked, in the words of one observer, as if they should
light up and play. Many boasted features that suggested that they might almost
get airborne. Pontiacs came with Strato-Streak V-8 engines and Strato-Flight
Hydra-Matic transmissions. Chryslers offered PowerFlyte Range Selector and
Torsion-Aire Suspension, while the Chevrolet Bel-Air had a hold-on-to-your-hat
feature called Triple Turbine TurboGlide.
By 1961, the American car-buyer had more than 350 models to
choose from. The family transport market
for the burgeoning middle class was still growing as the baby boom reached its
peak around 1960. As the median age of baby boomer increased to around 10, the
1960s took off as the age of the family station wagon.
People were so enamored of their cars that they more or less
tried to live in them. They dined at drive-in restaurants, passed their
evenings at drive-in movies, did their banking at drive-in banks, dropped their
clothes at drive-in dry cleaners. Los
Angeles had more cars than Asia, and General Motors was a bigger economic
entity than Belgium, and more exciting, too.
The 1950s were the pinnacle of the American automobile, and at the family-oriented feel-good center was the station wagon.