The Way Back

Last week a younger colleague and I were traveling to a conference together in her well equipped and relatively comfortable Toyota mini-van. The van has seating for 7 with a full sized row of seats behind the second row of seats but in front of the tailgate. In discussing her van's utility she referred to this row of seats as the "way back" and I had to stop her mid sentence. "Sorry" I said "that's my generation's term, and I forbid you from ever uttering it again... unless you do so in deference to those who actually experienced a true 'way back'." I'll accept mini-van owners saying "seating for seven" or "third row seating" but "way back" is sacred ground.

No way back ever had seats. In my estimation time has cheapened the significance of the term "the way back." There once was a time when the way back was a frontier, a vast wilderness of molded plastic, carpet and safety glass. There was no direct access, you clamored over the bench seat or crawled in through the tailgate to get there. There were no seat belts or air bags, curtain or otherwise. Your protection was limited to the very low probability that you'd actually get in an accident. Entertainment was spit balls and pretend space travel, not tiny TVs hanging from the ceiling.

Everyone, and I mean everyone, loves station wagons. We love them for their sentimentality as much as their practicality. It's funny to see how car manufacturers are now trying to come up with vehicles that drive like a sedan but with the carrying capacity of an SUV. They make crossovers or CUVs... when all we really need are station wagons. They'll come up with an entirely new vehicle, when they only really needed to blow up the trunk of the better sedans on the market.

My family's first wagon was a Pinto with fake wood panels that looked just like this except it was green where this one is white. These weren't prone to explosion as far as I recall... at least ours never blew up.

We moved on to a pair of Chevy Malibu wagons, like the one below but in blue and red and without the jacked up wheels. My strongest memory of that car was slamming our dog's tail in the rear window which opened separately from the tailgate.

Take a moment and appreciate the enormity of that rear storage area. Such a beautiful thing.

Today I drove neutral support today for the Quabbin Road Race in our current wagon, a 1995 Corolla Wagon (seen below). Once again the wagon proved to be an perfectly suited tool for the job. This car is going on 1/4 of a million miles, and I'd replace it if there was something as good as it on the road.

There isn't.

Here's our other car, a wagon of sorts, but without the glorious amount of "way back" room a proper wagon should have.

But the reality is the the corolla does have 225,000 miles on it, and we've been looking. Here's what we found so far.

The first generation Matrix (below) was looking pretty good, but there was a corolla redesign coming and we were hoping for a proper wagon to replace the stubby rear end of the 2008 version.

The new Matrix was a disappointment. Check it out here. The tiny third window standing watch over the cargo area was eliminated. What the hell is that? Doesn't this create a huge blind spot? Are we as car buying consumers that afraid of station wagons that we can't handle the third window?


Apparently so... check out the Venza. A wagon by any other estimation, but again they've jumped through hoops to avoid a sizable window over the cargo area, and have created another monster blind sot in the process.

Here's the 2002 Protege 5, another good looking car. This is a respectable small wagon.

The Mazda3 replaced it, and again the third window has been hacked down to near non-existence.


Hyundai's new Elantra wagon sedan seems to be afraid of that rear window too, but perhaps the name "Touring Sedan" will help it overcome the station wagon stigma.


Hopefully some of the euro "touring sedans" make their way stateside, like this straight sexy accord wagon.

That is a way back I can relate to.