Station Wagons - History

History

The first station wagons were a product of the age of train travel. They were originally called "depot hacks" because they worked around train depots as hacks (short for hackney carriage, an old name for taxis). They also came to be known as "carryalls" and "suburbans".

Before the 1930s, manufacturers assembled the framing of passenger compartments of passenger vehicles in hardwood. In automobiles, the framing was sheathed in steel and coated with colored lacquer for protection. Eventually, all-steel bodies were adopted because of their strength, cost, and durability.

Early station wagons evolved from trucks and were viewed as commercial vehicles (along with vans and pickup trucks), not consumer automobiles—with the framing of the early station wagons left unsheathed because of the commercial nature of the vehicles. Early station wagons were fixed roof vehicles, but lacked the glass that would normally enclose the passenger compartment, and had only bench seats. In lieu of glass, side curtains of canvas could be unrolled. More rigid curtains could be snapped in place to protect passengers from the elements outside.

In 1922 Essex introduced the first affordable enclosed automobile (sedan), which shifted the auto industry away from open vehicles to meet consumer demand for enclosed automobiles.

Initially, manufacture of the wagon's passenger compartments was outsourced to custom body builders because the production of the all-wood bodies was very time consuming. Major producers of wood-bodied station wagons included Mitchell Bentley, Hercules, USB&F, Cantrell, and other custom builders. The roofs of "woodie" wagons were usually made of stretched canvas that was treated with a water proofing dressing.

Eventually, the car companies themselves began building their own station wagons. Star (a division of Durant Motors) was the first car company to offer a factory-built station wagon, in 1923. In 1919, the Stoughton Wagon Company of Stoughton, Wisconsin, had begun putting custom wagon bodies on Model T chassis. By 1929 Ford was by far the biggest seller of station wagons. Since Ford owned its own hardwood forest and mills, it began supplying the wood components for the Model A wagon (although initially some final assembly still took place away from the factory, by Briggs, in Detroit, with wood from the Mengel Company in Louisville, Kentucky). The same year, J. T. Cantrell provided woodie bodies for Chrysler vehicles until 1931.

By the mid-1930s, wood-bodied station wagons had some prestige. They were priced higher than regular cars and were popular in affluent communities. By 1941, the Chrysler Town and Country was the most expensive car in the company's lineup.

Woodie wagons required constant maintenance: bodies were finished in varnishes that required recoating; bolts and screws required periodic tightening as wood expanded and contracted through the seasons. In 1935, General Motors introduced a steel-bodied eight-seat Suburban wagon, based on the Chevrolet truck.

Woodies popularity was renewed, in the surfing culture, during the 1950s and 1960s.