The Chrysler Pacifica is a family van that can carry many people and their stuff comfortably. It has lots of helpful features for families and can even run partly on electricity to save fuel. It's a popular choice for family trips.
A station wagon is a type of car that looks like a big car with extra space in the back. It got its name because it was used to carry people and their stuff to train stations a long time ago.
The Buick Roadmaster Estate is an old, fancy car that used real wood on its outside. It was very expensive and made for rich people because it needed a lot of care.
The Nissan Leaf is a car that runs on electricity instead of gas. It's popular because it's easy to drive around town and helps the environment by not using fuel. People sometimes test it to see how electric cars handle different situations.
The Chevrolet Tahoe is a big SUV that can carry lots of people and stuff. It's good for long trips and can handle rough roads or towing trailers. People like it because it's roomy and strong.
The subframe is like a strong part under the car that holds important pieces like the engine and wheels. If it gets bent, the car might not drive right or be safe.
The Honda Civic wagon is a version of the Civic car that has extra space in the back for carrying things. It's good for families or people who need more room.
The Chevrolet Vista Cruiser is a type of car with a big glass roof that lets in a lot of light. It was made a long time ago and is still liked by some people.
The Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser is an old-style family car with a big back area for carrying things and special windows on the roof that let in extra light. People like it because it looks different and can hold a lot of stuff.
A big block engine is a very strong and big engine that helps cars go fast and pull heavy loads. It's bigger than regular engines and used in powerful cars.
The Ford Country Squire is a big family car with a lot of space, made by Ford. It looks special because it has wood-like panels on the outside.
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Rose EP35: There's, there's really no way to, we're not gonna beat around the bush.
Rose EP35: no, I'm just kidding. We were just trying to get some listener participation. Yeah.
Emily EP35: She's in the wrong place.
LOL extremely humbling for sure. Steve, you're the.
If, you know, if you're doing that, you're helping with promo and would love, but like, you know, Steve doesn't need the promo. Like, again, we're talking about a legend here. Um, but anyway,
Emily EP35: Yeah. McKinley William Thompson, Jr.
Rose EP35: yeah, like so what would fabric, what we would consider like a tech center Rose EP35: And then, uh, you know, big earn restyle jeans, Pacifica, which is a Ford also. And that was a Ford custom car caravan. So in, in a sense a suite opportunity came big earner's way too through Ford. So gotta, you know, uh, some opportunities have happened through Ford. You gotta
Emily EP35: he also said, I love you both. Oh,
Rose EP35: Emily called you a rocker.
Rose EP35: Yeah. Well, welcome to the basement. We've really hit, we've really hit the bottom here. Now we're gonna do home cooked sound effects. And that's it. We're in the basement. The, show at its lowest. It's very rock bottom and at rock bottom, there's no one better to mention than our final write-in. It's not a write-in it's
Rose EP35: Yeah, that's how it works. , The, weaker city has to pay licensing to the other city.
Emily EP35: yeah. That's where it looks like that was the new, that was the new generation. And that wa it looks like it got kicked in the butt. Kind of looks a little bit like a terce, like a's
Emily EP35: No. There wasn't emblems. There wasn't emblems like sticking out like a Mercedes. Like what do you mean? Like the h? No,
Emily EP35: Oh, okay. Yeah. No, they nothing.
Emily EP35: how they became station wagons was they were motorized. So the horses are gone, the hacks are gone. And station, train, station, and then wagon, because it was, you know, a wagon. And that's where the word station wagon comes from.
Emily EP35: This is around the twenties, like mid twenties probably. And anyway, it was so expensive. The wood was so expensive and it needed so much upkeep and everything that on top of it, they added all these luxury items. So it was like the highest. Price car. They were very expensive. So it was basically for rich people to like tole around in the city.
Emily EP35: the last wagon to feature real wood was the 1950 Buick Roadmaster estate Rose EP35: doesn't, you know, the water doesn't stay in the car that well. Okay.
Rose EP35: didn't like the water, you know, and you gotta give the Roadmaster credit. 'cause like on motor MythBusters, we tried to drive a Nissan Leaf into the water twice. Like we bought two of 'em. And the Roadmaster could be filled with water and keep driving around. It's a little different. Mm-hmm. But still impressive.
I mean, most, you know, most distributors are driven off the cam. It's just that this one is turned on its face and just connected end to end with it. So I had one of those, but it's called an L 99. Yeah. And it's a 2 65. Wow. It's a 4.3 V eight, so it's the same cubes as my V six, but it's a V eight and the, that's the V eight in the Wow.
That's why a lot of roofs had cloth inserts. 'cause they couldn't do stampings that big at the time.
And cars are getting bigger every year. You think about like a model A, like two people can barely, you know, today would, would hop in a model A and be like, man, this thing's tiny.
Emily EP35: Interesting. I've never, yeah, I've never seen
Rose EP35: He's a baby boomer big station wagon fan. Okay. Like grew up always talking about the fleet master that grandma and grandpa owned.
Rose EP35: it was, it was brown. It looked like a chocolate milk that you buy in the jug, like store chocolate milk. In the panels on either side of the wood grain uhhuh to give you a, like a color reference. But we did have the big the ladder or the luggage rack with the stainless reflector on the back, like the spoiler down was on there.
Rose EP35: So the, the market data bears bears out, Emily EP35: Yeah.
Emily EP35: Wow. That's yeah. That little van.
Rose EP35: The headliner eventually came down and dropped Orange Fuzz all over us.
Um, but I have some pretty good stories about my little Honda Civics. One of 'em my 82. I lived in government camp, which is here on Mount Hood and we were going, me and four other girls breaking, rocks
I'm just like, I couldn't find it anywhere. So I thought I just lost it. Right? And then they have us pull over, of course, because it's four girls with all their snowboarding shit in a tiny, tiny wagon.
Yeah. And then they, they let us go. But you know what they didn't find, it's our fucking fake IDs. And I think that, I think we would've gotten into a lot of trouble for that. So I'm glad that they didn't find our fake government issued IDs. And they just found my pipe. Then we went on our merry way, went back to Govey and had a great time.
back and forth, back and forth like three times. I drove it all the way down to Tahoe from Jackson. I drove it to Salt Lake from Jackson. And then I was hot dogging it around in a parking lot, in a ski parking lot. And I hot dogged a little too hard and I hit some, like an ice wall.
I was young and there was some ice in one of those and I think it just hit my front wheel anyway. It didn't like dent the car up really bad, but what happened was it bent the frame, AKA, the subframe and I found out that, oh, there's places that straighten frames out. I don't know anything about cars really at this point except for like how to like change my oil and that kind of stuff.
Rose EP35: Yeah, I was like, uh, he, he was like, I, yeah, the drag links bent, but like, I didn't know what a drag link was. And then, I guess he was telling me the frame was bent, but I didn't, I just didn't understand it.
Yeah. And now that I'm thinking about it, I think maybe I've owned five wagons because I'm like, there was another civic wagon that I had when I first moved to Portland, and I know that that one with the frame situation didn't last for long. So anyway, I've owned a lot of wagons. That's
Rose EP35: I've never looked at a magnum. Been like the driver of this car has a huge dong. But I do like the Magnum condom. What? The car, so the Magnum, I think, is it like that's one of the coolest wagons ever made.
Emily EP35: I love the Vista Cruiser. Even though it's like a little bit weird looking from the side. I just love the glass
Emily EP35: Oh, wow. Nice. You had put in this list that we have the Catalina wagon.
Rose EP35: I just kinda like had that thought around the time that he passed away. Anyway, I have undecided.
Rose EP35: Yay. Yo man. But it's actually Yeomen and that is like a, you can be a yeomen in the Navy, but the yeomen is the first, as far as I know, I'm gonna blow this thing wide open. Uh, if you know, otherwise, please write in and tell me. And I, I mean this shit, this is not a brain buster, but let us know first two door, big block wagon because it's got a 3 48 W
Rose EP35: But the Edsel wagon didn't come with the big lock. It got the, uh, 360 3 FE or 360 1, I don't wanna look in the notes, but it was a, uh, 400 foot pounds of torque motor. So it was actually known more as the 400. But yeah, the Edsel wagon basically no big block. Mm-hmm. No, four 10. So it's out 58 yaman, I think, is it 58?
Rose EP35: I mean, I can see that in Europe because the cars are already smaller. Yeah. So I mean, I guess that's actually a reverse of what you would think if the cars were already smaller, that they would need doors for greater access.
Emily EP35: Because Exactly, because the uh, back seat, the directly behind the cockpit is a lounge.
Rose EP35: take so much Ginkgo baloba.
And infinity. And
Emily EP35: looked like you could see the strips in the photos. I didn't really understand. I could vision it, but I didn't. In the photos it looked like you could see strips of whatever it was they were using to darken
Emily EP35: Yeah. Yeah. You have to look, it's got like, uh, these metal bars that cross and then it, that's where they, meet at an intersection at 90 degree angles, and then that's where it, like that there's a circle in the middle of that, like a little ball.
Emily EP35: Well, usually these people have children that have station wagons. So the back door opened up as a clamshell and it was carpeted on the bottom. And so kids like walked up, that was like their stairway to get into the backseat, which also was a rear facing backseat.
It's all about modern technology, so, no, not at all.
Emily EP35: because it was in like, this one I think was in 62 and then they did one in 69 and the 69 1 had suicide doors on the passenger side, so you could really get into that lounge.
Rose EP35: No, it's the Brookwood. It's the bottom line. Which was the Del Rey.
And then I was wondering, was there a radio up front? I never found out if there was a radio up front. It said, they had a thermoelectric oven. Refrigerator.
Rose EP35: He's only ever built concept cars and he started working for the brothers when he was 14. And I'm pretty sure that Faye said he had a customized 64 Impala before he could drive.
Emily EP35: Yeah. This one didn't have, like, it didn't look like there was enough room in the passenger compartment for all of that shit.
Rose EP35: that whole same idea. It's got that whole like teardrop smooth.
Rose EP35: Yeah, I don't know what kind, like either the later, Rose EP35: Just make it the XL in the Will Shatner Pro model.
Rose EP35: then they'd wanna shoot it again. And he just did it all day long. And by the end of the day, that brand new country squire transmission burned out. I'm
Rose EP35: They had him like drive up these steps. Okay. And I don't know if they had turned the steps into the ramp or what. I mean it's in his book, his TV movie, car book. He would back the station wagon back down the steps of the stadium because he said driving around it was took too long. Like you could go around the top of the stadium and then there was a wake for the car to make it back down. And he was like, it took forever. He's like, so I just backed down the stairs. Whoa. And I think, I think he backed down it with a trailer,
And he was like, well, thank you. And I was like, I, I'm reading your book. And I was like, all this stuff that you did is bananas. It's insane. And he was like, oh yeah, which, which one? And I was like, told him about the stadium one, and he's like, oh yeah. And then the other one that I was really amazed by was the they, I think this was a station wagon also was they froze it in a block of ice.
Rose EP35: But they did, they froze the car in a block of ice.
Rose EP35: Well, I just, like when I lost my grandfather, which was 2008, there were these stories about his, his father that I like, could barely remember, and I wish I'd wrote him down. Right. So, you know, like I had a chance to correct course on that.
About this episode
The hosts dive into a nostalgic and detailed discussion about station wagons, sharing personal stories and historical tidbits. They explore the evolution of wagons from wood-bodied luxury vehicles to practical family haulers, touching on unique models like the Buick Roadmaster estate and the Dodge Magnum. Anecdotes include mishaps with old wagons, frame damage, and memorable road trips. The conversation also highlights quirky features like clamshell tailgates and rear-facing seats, while reflecting on automotive culture and personal connections to these iconic cars.
