Well before normcore was a thing, the station wagon was demonstrating how something lame could transition, with time, into something cool. Once solely the choice of Griswoldian parents, by the 21st Century, the long two-box cars had come to be the choice of a certain class of automotive cognoscenti — people who wanted vehicles with the valuable space and versatility of an SUV, but the better handling and fuel economy of a sedan.
Of course, the fact that automakers had begun stuffing insane amounts of power and performance into their wagons played a big role, too. Chief among those doing so was AMG, which has been offering up V8-powered station wagons for decades both abroad and in America. So it's a little bit shocking — and a whole lot of disappointing — to hear that Mercedes may be planning to kill off all its station wagons by the end of the decade.
That's according to a report from Germany's Automobilwoche, brought to the attention of English-speaking audiences by Motor1. The original article is hidden behind a paywall, but the lede that's visible makes the point pretty clear: "There is not enough demand for the station wagon...in the mega-markets of the USA and China. The company therefore wants to concentrate on body shapes with more potential in the future."
According to Motor1, the plan will kick off in 2025 when the CLA-Class wagon is put down. The E-Class wagon will reportedly stick around until 2030 or so, when the generation set to go on sale in the next year or so will be phased out (presumably in favor of an all-electric model). The C-Class wagon will likely vanish somewhere inbetween the two, as well.
That said, while the Mercedes station wagon as we currently know it will allegedly shuffle off this mortal coil, don't be surprised if something very much like it sticks around in some form. The line between crossovers and wagons continues to grow blurrier by the year, thanks to cars like the Subaru Crosstrek / Outback / Forester, the Ford Mustang Mach-E and even Mercedes-Benz's own All-Terrain models — and while buyers clearly like the ride height of SUVs, electric vehicles' need for optimized aerodynamics mean carmakers also have a motive to make those EVs as low as they can get away with. Come next decade, we may well find ourselves crying out: the wagon is dead; long live the wagon.
