April 11, 2007

Gimme A [Shooting] Break! Vintage Station Wagonporn Via Hemmings

xjs_break_hemmings.jpg

Clearly, I've been too hypnotized for too long by Jalopnik's whatever-amino! series, which features evermore random cars turned into El Camino-style pickup trucks. While I was distracted by those shiny objects dangling over there, I completely missed the blog at Hemmings Motor News, which is a weirder, greasier, even more obscure source of automotive entertainment.

'Roundabout January, they ran a series on Shooting Breaks, the quixotic, hatchbacky pseudo-station wagon versions of otherwise normal cars. [Example: the above Jaguar XJS Wagon with four full seats and period Miami Vice purple/turquoise pinstripe paint job].

Between that and the vintage station wagon randomiana, I feel a full-on rewrite coming on of the much-maligned history of the Wagonqueen family truckster. If even 10% of the station wagon stuff on here was more widely known, I predict men in America would be scrambling to have even more kids more quickly so they could justify getting a wagon even six months sooner. The images below barely scratch buff the surface.

And to top it all off, my man's gone and named his kid after Professor X [among others]. Sorry, Jalopnik, but Hemmings is riding shotgun for a while.

The 1972 Hurst/Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser Indy 500 Pace Car

hurst_olds_vista_cruiser.jpg

The Citroen DS21 Wagon [actually, this one's already on my shortlist]

ds21_wagon_hemmings.jpg

Q. What happens when a 1972 Ford wagon does jr. year abroad? She goes and gets knocked up by a Rolls Royce. Look, he has his daddy's nose!

rolls_wagon_hemmings.jpg

Uh, maybe there is such a thing as "too far" for wagonization. And I swear, I thought that before I saw the 1958 Porsche 356 conversion by Dayton's own Taj Ma Garaj.

356_kreuzer_hemmings.jpg


Hemmings Auto Blogs
[blogs.hemmings.com]

3 Comments

All I know is, I want to put surf racks on that purple Jag wagon bad boy.

********
http://surfcountry.blogspot.com/

[I know, right? I never gave a damn about that era of XJS, but suddenly, it's perfect, like a VW Squareback for millionaires or something. -ed.]

Elan for me:

http://www.pestalozzi.net/sb/lotus_elanbulance/index.html

Actually, I think we're going to try to pick up a 9-3 wagon in Sweden this year. I'd been thinking about waiting until they got around to adding all wheel drive, but GM is just giving the things away, and their European delivery deal is awesome.

We talked about calling him Magneto...and the Cougar is because "Wolverine" would have been too obvious.

Speaking of the Truckster...look just a touch to the right of the bottom pic:
http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2007/03/29/bumped/

[dude. I learned to drive in that car. Or in the 1977 Chevy Caprice Classic Wagon, same diff. -ed.]

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