Everyone loves station wagons, what does it mean?

Text | Joey

What does a station wagon mean to me?

In 2015, I lived for a whole year in New Zealand, where public transport is not developed and the country's roads are still spread over various slopes. You know, in that sparsely populated, inaccessible place, not having a single car is really painful. Therefore, like many newcomers, I also look for a used car with OK and better prices in various forums.

Eventually, I bought a Subaru Impreza station wagon from a Shanghainese from 2002. I still remember buying it for a whopping $4300. When the car was delivered, he stroked the silver car and reluctantly poured out to me the difficult years when he first arrived in New Zealand. In his recollections, I know the story of him and the car.

In the early days of his struggle, when the income was not high and the work was unstable, he would sometimes borrow in someone else's garage, and sometimes squeeze into this small B-class or A-class station wagon, surviving a poor but dreamy night. For him, the Subaru Impreza is a different home. So much so that during the test drive before I bought the car, he constantly reminded me to drive slowly and not to bang the throttle.

Later, I gradually discovered another layer of deep meaning of this sentence. Because this car, it can hardly accelerate. Simply put, it is to bombard the throttle, and the car does not go. How unpowering is the power of this car?

I still remember that before I was leaving New Zealand, I drove this car on a long trip around the island. It was on that trip that a police car pulled the alarm and stopped me on the highway. It wasn't a scene from an American crime movie, because the police kindly told me that the reason for stopping me was that the car was too slow (it was a low-speed highway).

Although its shortcomings are so obvious, in my heart, this station wagon that takes me through the mountains and seas and sees the beauty of the world has a special place in all the cars I have driven. It could even be said that during the trip, it was my home. To this day, I still flip through the photos I left behind, because this station wagon is the most beautiful existence in my heart.

But pulling back to reality, in the Chinese market, the station wagon is an awkward existence.

The station wagon has also been brilliant

On the one hand, almost all car buyers think that the crock pot is YYDS. On the other hand, when it is really the turn to pay for it yourself, it is hesitant again and again. In the end, it is not to switch to the arms of the car, or to adopt the most secure way to choose an SUV.

You can see this from the sales statistics of the "crock tank" model. When I went looking for sales of crock tank models in the Chinese market in 2021, many information channels were reluctant to even make a separate sales list for the station wagon. Let's put it this way, the popularity of wagons in China is even less limited in the Chinese market, and more are considered to be exclusive to small business owners.

Thus, a whole new question was born, why does everyone love a station wagon but are reluctant to buy it?

In fact, the station wagon has also had its glory in China.

In 1992, nine years after The Santana, China's first god car, was introduced into China, Shanghai Volkswagen introduced a travel version of the model. Simply put, it is the Passat B2, or Santana's hatchback version of the sedan with a tail compartment.

As a result, it still retains all the advantages of the Santanad car. The 1.8L engine can output enough power, and the gearboxes in the early fourth and fifth gears can also bring a very good handling experience at that time. What's more, the travel version also has a larger tail compartment space than the hatchback Santana model.

I still remember the excitement I felt when my dad borrowed his brother's work car, a travel version of Poussin painted in yellow and dedicated to the power system, and took me out to play.

So, this travel version of the model, which was as advanced as Poussin (and indeed advanced at the time), and larger and more equipped than Poussin, was very attractive to Chinese who wanted to be bigger and bigger in that era (in fact, the same is true in this era).

How attractive is this? From its introduction to its discontinuation, Poussin's travel version sold more than a million units (many of which were officially purchased, of course). Even in today's market environment, this number is enough to make people envious.

In fact, in that era, santana travel edition did not exist alone, almost as famous as it, including the Guangzhou Peugeot 505SW. Although people who know this car now, and even know that Peugeot has also been a joint venture with GAC, it can almost be described as very few. But this product, which is very similar to the Santana Travel Edition and has a production period of 6 years earlier than it, is the well-deserved originator of the domestic station wagon.

Why can't a station wagon work?

8-10 years after santana travel edition appeared, the Chinese market began to truly enter the era of family cars. If today's young people, the starting model in the field of household cars has generally risen to the level of BBA, then in the early 21st century, the spring of family cars at that time was basically tilted to the joint venture cars, which were priced at about 100,000 yuan.

At that time, SAIC and GM cooperated to launch the local buick brand. The most famous product of the year under this brand, in addition to the administrative-level Buick New Century (that is, the later Regal), is the 100,000 yuan family car brand of Sail. In this model sequence there is a version of the station wagon.

Although the later Saiou models, with the continuous enrichment and growth of the Chinese automobile market, began to decline within a few years. The Sail brand shifted from Buick to Chevrolet, and finally the platform was shared with SAIC-GM-Wuling, which can basically be judged to be in decline in the Chinese market. But I still remember that year, the neighbor's big brother, who was 7 or 8 years older than me, drove his newly purchased Sail wagon, showed off to me, and took me around Shanghai.

Whether it's the Santana touring version that my dad took me to, the Sails touring car that my neighbor's big brother drove, or the Subaru Impreza touring version that I had briefly owned, there is no doubt that the crock pot has become the favorite means of transportation in my life.

As I said at the beginning, although there are a lot of people who love the crock pot model (there are still many tuning enthusiasts playing with Poussin's modified cars today), when it comes to actual purchases, obviously the number is not so much.

This status quo, first of all, stems from the beginning of the second decade of the 21st century, the Chinese auto market ushered in a blowout, and the biggest leader of the blowout is the SUV model. Larger, better-performing, and more functional SUVs can occupy half of the annual sales list of the Chinese auto market for a long time.

These characteristics of SUV models almost overlap with the "crock pot" and are even better. As a result of this situation, the joint venture car companies began to be less willing to produce station wagons. As a result, the result is that most of the station wagons, including the Audi A4, A6 Avant and Allroad models that are now in the mainstream, are imported; such imported models also include Mercedes-Benz's C-class station wagons, as well as Volkswagen's Weilan and Skoda and other station wagons.

Obviously, the vast majority of people don't spend an import tax that's much more expensive than a sedan just because they like it, and buy a station wagon with only one large trunk than a sedan. Such a result is bound to lead to a further contraction of the market share of station wagons. To put it simply: I know that the station wagon is good, but it is not worth the money.

Of course, buying or not still does not affect the love, for example, for me, I still hope to one day be able to buy an additional A6 Avant. And if I'm lucky enough to win a few consecutive lotteries in the future, RS6 isn't out of the question.

What excites me even more is that the BMW M3, which has never launched a wagon version, seems to have begun to break its own traditions. Not long ago, I noticed the information about the M3 travel version, which also began to appear on the Internet. This seems to give people who love "crock pots" and love performance a reason to buy a station wagon more than enough.

If in the past decade, the station wagon has not been prominent in function, the cost performance is not high, and the living space has been greatly squeezed by SUV models, resulting in a "vicious circle" of sales, then it seems that the opportunity for transformation is not without.

First of all, China's auto market demand has gradually become more diversified, such as MPV, pickup trucks and other previous niche models began to have a good market demand. For the station wagon that everyone likes, such a market environment is also expected to help this model category to obtain better market attention and sales.

At the same time, the market is also calling for a blockbuster station wagon to urge automakers to re-invest in the research and development and localization process of this category. In short, the station wagon is a good car, and people who love it have blessed it with "people" and "BUFF", but until everyone buys it, it may also need the blessing of "time and time" and "location".

But as far as I'm concerned, I always think that the next one will have to buy a "crock pot". What about you?