I wanted to see what the story was behind that, "Ooh, Acura's thinking of bringing the European Honda Accord Wagon to the US!" story. So I put in a call to the PR folks at Acura.
They were very nice and friendly and upbeat and they feel that all the enthusiasm the story has generated online is a great sign, and they're always looking at various segments, and maybe younger people are having different perceptions of station wagons from the olds, and they know that journalists really love station wagons and--
OK, let's stop right there. I think we know what this was: the Acura guy giving a friendly, stay-positive, non-committal response to the Car & Driver station wagon fanboi's enthusiastic question.
So if you're a "Driver Dad," you are meant for the Acura MDX, which, it just so happens, we'll be heading to Southern Utah in tomorrow [It's my "Driver Mom's," btw, not a PR freebie.] And if you want a Honda Accord Wagon, you'll still have to move to Europe. Where they also come equipped with free universal health care, standard! [thanks dt reader dt for the assist]
Oh yeah, also update: At the end of our conversation about how, if only there were more journalists, there'd finally be a market in the US for wagons, the PR said she really liked Daddy Types. And I thanked her, then laughed that dadblogs are the station wagons to momblogs' SUVs: a tenth of the traffic, but it's an enthusiastic audience. Which, I realized, was about the quickest path possible to auto industry irrelevance. Guess that'll leave some adspace open over there >>>> for a while.
Like I said, wagons just don't sell in the U.S. you can't really blame the automakers for that.
Also Honda is coming out with the U.S. Accord Crosstour which will be a hatch. Not as big as a Venza but it's the closest to a wagon as they're going to get.
The Crosstour's fastback looks will do pretty well for sales, but god forbid you actually want to use the thing for carrying anything big. Don't get me wrong, I think fastback hatches have a place (I loved the last-gen Mazda 6 Sport) but it seems like too many potentially great wagons get neutered in the fastback form. (Look at what happened to the Mitsubishi Lancer Sportback in the latest iteration; it used to be a great square tall wagon and now you can barely fit a suitcase in there...)