Name: Why Station Wagons Are More Popular In Europe Than America
Uploaded: 2021-04-25T03:47:19.000Z
Duration: 13 min 28 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hi, I'm Jack Smith and right now, it's station wagon savings time in the

west. Time to hit the trail in high style with all a will comfort, but

only a Rambler station wagon can give you.

The station wagon was once a fixture of American family life.

It was a common sight in American garages and frequently featured in

These days, however, it has nearly vanished from US roads.

Americans, at least most of them, just don't like the segment.

And it shows in the tiny number of wagons sold every year, Americans just

We we have rejected the body style for many years.

It's been declining. You know, we think back to perhaps some of those

movies like National Lampoon's Vacation, where a family travels across the

country in a wagon. Those days are long, long behind us.

And these days, wagon sales are less than 2 percent of all industry sales.

Meanwhile, crossovers and sport utility vehicles continue to swallow

market share, leading many manufacturers to believe that if they want to

sell a wagon, they need to lift it a bit, maybe cover it with some

You want the crossover tag associated with it because that's what people

are buying and that's what they want to buy.

At some point, they may want another tag because it's no longer cool to

In 2018, consumers around the world bought just under 2.5

million wagons, roughly a mere 3 percent of all new cars sold in the

United States the segment represents only about 1 to 2 percent of all

sales. But in some European countries, sales are several times that.

Wagon's represented nearly 20 percent of all sales in Germany and at least

a quarter of sales in some Scandinavian countries, such as Finland and

Sweden. wagons also comprised 23 percent of all sales in Czech Republic,

16 percent in Slovakia and 15 percent in Poland.

In Sweden our home country, close to 50 percent of our volume is related

to wagons. You have the best residual values, you have the most loyal

consumers. And also that is how we were live in Sweden.

You know, it's a lot of football and a lot of sports associated with our

And so the legacy of wagons is really in our DNA.

Also you see them all over the place and the roads in Sweden and in

Europe. More than 70 percent of all wagon's sold in the world are sold in

Europe. There the wagon is still seen as an efficient blend of function

and performance, especially when fuel prices can be quite high.

In Europe, the station wagon continues to be the

prototype for many families, even though it they have lost traction as

well in Europe. Despite the fact that Europe is the world's wagon

stronghold, data do suggest that sport utilities are eating into its share

Of course, on the other end of the spectrum, US data show that sport

utility vehicles have completely eclipsed the wagon as the family hauler

of choice. Wagons have steadily lost share in the US new car market

Cross-overs and SUVs grew their share of the new car market in the US by

They now make up nearly half of all new car sales.

For now, wagons have managed to find a way to keep a foothold, albeit a

For example, the segment straddling Subaru Outback has been a tremendously

successful product for that company part wagon, part crossover.

The Outback was introduced in the 1995 model year as a variant of the

Subaru legacy, but was soon spun out into its own distinct brand and has

The outback alone accounted for the vast majority of wagon sales in the

percent of the US market wagons have the outback alone makes up 1.2

percent. In other words, almost all of it.

That means all wagons sold by all other brands combined would account for

So when we talk about wagons, we're essentially talking about one model

with with a very decent industry share and then a handful of other models

that, quite frankly, don't sell very well.

The outback is an example of how wagon like vehicles can be successfully

marketed in the United States and perhaps gives an idea of how they are

likely to look in the future if they stick around.

Though it retains many of the basic features of a wagon, the car is lifted

a bit and covered in plastic cladding to give it more of a rugged outdoor

appearance. It retains the basic silhouette of the wagon, but the outback

has evolved over time to incorporate more attributes of SUVs and

This includes standard all wheel drive, the ability to tow up to thirty

five hundred pounds and a full eight point seven inches of ground

clearance higher than what is found on many SUVs.

The company said they were one of the early players obviously in this

crossover space before the term crossover was even mentioned.

And that's again when they were being called wagons.

So I think they've done well if they've got a very loyal buyer.

They've expanded into the certainly the outdoor lifestyle buyer has has

So I think, you know, is that as that continues to to develop and people

are more interested in an active, active lives and in certainly what what

super has to offer from just an honor and capability.

But but also on dirt and on on trails even.

The outback shows that selling a wagon in the US may be a lot easier if it

happens to look like a sport utility vehicle.

In fact, it might be one of the only wagon like vehicles to survive in the

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Why Station Wagons Are More Popular In Europe Than America

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