![]() “They look like wagons, but they are not wagons,” Snyder said. He said the small wagons manufactured today by Subaru and other companies are considered SUVs by station wagon purists like himself. “They became even more rare in the 2000s.” “That was up until about 1996, and you started see them kind of fading away after that,” Snyder said. Snyder said Ford, Chevy and GM continued to manufacture station wagons through the first half of the 1990s. The Ford Taurus station wagon was a midsize model that proved immensely popular in the 1980s. ![]() “They came in the 1980s, and that started to kill wagons a bit, but they were still a good product.” “Station wagons started to fade out a little because of minivans,” Snyder said. Then a new vehicle meant to accommodate families arrived on the market. “My wife drives a 1982 Plymouth Reliant station wagon, which was made by Chrysler.” “In the 1980s, vehicles started to become smaller, and the station wagons became smaller also,” Snyder said. The large and popular family cars continued to be manufactured - using steel - through the 1970s. “Then the big automakers said, ‘We can build these ourselves,’” Snyder said. Manufacturers sent a car chassis to a builder to add the wooden addition that would make it a station wagon, but that system ceased in the 1940s. He said the station wagon’s name belies its origin, as a wooden version known as a “depot hack” was used to ferry people and their luggage from train stations to hotels beginning in the 1920s. “They were unique, and that’s what many of us remember from our childhoods.” “They were very colorful cars at that period, and they had fins,” Snyder said of the 1950s wagons. He learned to drive in a 1958 Plymouth station wagon, which he said is a model from the most unusual decade in station wagon manufacturing. I took my driver’s test in a station wagon,” Snyder said. Snyder’s fondness for station wagons indeed stems from his youth, which was full of the vast vehicles. Chuck Snyder, a member of the International Station Wagon Club, wipes down the hood of his 1974 Mercury Montego wagon on Friday morning, July 7, 2023.
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