Station wagons, once the domain of proudly suburban mums and dads everywhere, have been reinvented for these SUV infested times. Once considered frumpy and utile, the only reason anyone would have needed a station wagon was to lug around a growing family and still have space left in the back for all their stuff.

It’s the template today’s armada of SUVs adheres to with the added benefit of high-riding seating positions and the idea – if not entirely the reality – that SUVs can go where mere cars and wagons can’t.

But despite the ever-growing demand for SUVs, station wagons – or estates, tourers, sportwagons, call them what you will – remain a part of the automotive diaspora.

The modern station wagon is just as likely to blend supercar-like performance in a family-sized package as it is to imbue us with nostalgia for a different time, a time when wagons filled driveways all over the world.

Looking back through history brings to light just how vital the station wagon was to the world’s carmakers. From technological innovation to gargantuan dimensions and yes, sometimes even shock-and-awe supercar numbers, the humble wagon continues to defy convention in the face of the prevailing consumer sentiment.

This then, is how we arrived at this point in station wagon history with 10 of the most iconic, influential and revered estates – in no particular order – to ever don a long roof.

Audi RS6

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It’s testament to the allure of the Audi RS6 that by the time the third-generation model rolled around in 2012, the sedan version had been consigned to the RS back catalogue, leaving what is arguably the Apex predator of station wagons everywhere – the RS6 Avant.

There’s no mistaking today’s RS6 Avant for anything else, not even its tamer A6 Avant donor car – not that there is left much for the regular A6 wagon to donate, the only common parts being the front doors, roof and tailgate, the rest all bespoke to the RS6.

Behind its low, wide and menacing profile lies the beating heart of a thunderous twin-turbo V8, the same V8 serving multiple masters across the Volkswagen Audi Group multiverse.

And yes, today’s C8 generation RS6 Avant might be the quickest and most powerful of all, that came
before, with a 0-100km/h sprint claim of 3.6 seconds accompanied by a symphony of combustion that makes a mockery of the EV zeitgeist, it’s 2008’s C6 generation that’s truly in the Pantheon of Audi RS6 greatness.

The early Noughties was the age of the V10. Formula One raced with them, while carmakers built them. Every month, it seemed, yet another manufacturer would proudly show off its bent-10 creation. Lexus had one, so too Porsche, Lamborghini and BMW. In the US, Dodge couldn’t ignore the V10’s Siren’s call.

Audi too had its fingers in the V10 pie, put to work in S6, S8 and R8 models before seeking out new horizons in the RS6 Avant. It transformed what was already a bit of a sleeper car into the ultimate ‘Q’ car. The twin-turbo (yes, really) 5.0-litre V10 was good for 427kW and 650Nm, propelling the humble wagon from 0-100km/h in 4.6 seconds. And it was a humble station wagon, with not much in the way of exterior embellishments to distinguish it from lesser A6s. The very definition of Q car.

The RS6 Avant was, at that time, the most powerful Audi production car ever and while the generations that followed have become ever more powerful and faster still, none have the madness and the presence of the C6 gen RS6 Avant, which sits, arguably, at the apogee of the hot rod wagon world.

Mercedes-Benz S123 Estate

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Words like ‘timeless’, ‘icon’, and ‘classic’ are bandied about all too easily in the automotive world, but in the case of the Mercedes-Benz W123, those words ring true.

Launched in 1975, the W123 – the progenitor to today’s E-Class – quickly established a reputation for durability and reliability combined with comfort and unparalleled build quality.

The sedan got the W123 train rolling in 1975 before Mercedes-Benz got adventurous and added a station wagon to the ever-expanding range that also counted coupes and long-wheelbase limos in its line-up.

The Mercedes-Benz 280TE (internal code S123) was an instant hit when it launched in 1978, bringing with it all the luxury hallmarks of the Mercedes brand in a spacious, practical and comfortable package. Oh, and in 2.8-litre petrol trim, it was the fastest and most expensive station wagon in the world in its day.

Mercedes-Benz hadn’t built an estate before the TE came along, Incidentally, the ‘T’ in ‘TE’ stands for Tourismus und Transport (Touring and Transport), but its immediate desirability (demand for the TE far outstripped supply) ensured that station wagons bearing the three-pointed star became an integral part of the German manufacturer’s future.

Various engine choices were made available – from miserly diesels to powerful petrol – but it’s the 280TE and its legendary and bulletproof M110 2.8-litre straight-six petrol that was the hero of the TE range. With 130kW and 234Nm on hand, the family hauler could hit top speeds in excess of 200km/h, perfect for touring on the Autobahn.

Available with five seats as standard, ticking the optional seven-seater box netted owners a pair of rearward facing seats in the cargo area which, when not in use, stowed away into the floor to free up load lugging space, rated between 523-2000L.

Little wonder then that former Beatle John Lennon owned one (a diesel-powered 300TD) which he used as a daily driver in New York, transporting his musical instruments in comfort and Bruno Sacco-designed style. It was the last car he ever owned.

Volvo P220

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Volvo had built a station wagon before the P220 Amazon came along in 1962. But that early effort, namely the Volvo Duett series of panel vans and wagons which were built on ladder-frame chassis and only featured two doors, really were light commercial vehicles.

But the P220 Amazon marked a shift for the brand, the first station wagon adapted from a Volvo passenger car, sharing its platform and unibody construction with the 121 and 122S sedan.

Adopting the styling of its sedan stablemate, the P220 blended the 121’s softened lines and distinctive split grille with a long roof – reinforced for added body rigidity – and a two-piece tailgate, inspired by the design of American station wagons.

Power initially came from the B18 1.8-litre inline four-cylinder making 55kW. By the end of its life
cycle in 1969, displacement had grown to two litres while peak power increased to 67kW.

A four-speed manual or three-speed automatic transmission sent drive to the rear wheels. Disc brakes replaced drums up front in 1964 and in 1968, the addition of a collapsible steering wheel underscored Volvo’s pioneering safety efforts.

The Volvo P220 Amazon established the Swedish brand internationally, reflected in sales figures. Some 73,000 of the estate were produced over its 1962-69 lifespan, and according to Volvo, “the P220 became more frequent outside the Nordic markets”.

One notable international customer was the UK’s Hampshire Constabulary, which added five P220s to its traffic division fleet.

The P220 was replaced in 1970 by the new-generation Volvo 145 Estate, the first in a long line of increasingly boxy station wagons from the Swedish brand, which had, thanks to the P220 established itself as a leading manufacturer of family wagons.

Sadly, Volvo has not been immune from the SUV onslaught, ending production of the V90 estate in September 2025, leaving only the small V60. However, with the model’s lifecycle ending in 2026, its likely to follow its V90 sibling into the history books.

Ferrari FF

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A Ferrari wagon? Not quite, but as a shooting break, the 2011 Ferrari FF brought a dollop of practicality to the world of exotics long before the dreams of luring cashed-up buyers into SUVs began.

Ostensibly a grand tourer, the Ferrari FF enjoyed comfortable seating for four adults, 450 litres of cargo-carrying ability (expanding to 800 litres), a trick all-wheel drive system, dubbed 4RM, and a stonking 6.3-litre naturally-aspirated V12 under that sleek snout up front.

That V12 didn’t just sing for its supper. It positively bellowed, making 485kW at a blood-curdling 8000rpm, which, along with 683Nm of torque, hurtled the family wagon from 0-100km/h in just 3.7 seconds towards a top speed of 335km/h. Little wonder then that the FF entered the record books as ‘the fastest four-seat car in the world’.

Fast, yes, and practical to a point, perhaps the FF’s greatest achievement was in thumbing its nose at Prancing Horse convention. Here was a Ferrari like no other. Yes, it bore all the hallmarks of that storied brand’s grand touring tradition, but it did so in a challenging and unorthodox manner.

Ferrari doubled-down with the FF’s successor, 2016’s GTC4Lusso which brought more power, more torque, even harder acceleration (3.4s) and an evolution of the shooting break body style that looked altogether more resolved and elegant than its predecessor.

Like the FF, the GTC4Lusso remained in production for five years before Maranello pulled the pin on its most audacious era of grand tourer design. There was no successor, except…

In 2023 Ferrari did the unthinkable and succumbed to the zeitgeist with its first-ever crossover SUV, the Purosangue, a car that Maranello had promised it would never, ever, build. But then, this isn’t an ‘SUV’ according to Ferrari, but rather an ‘FUV’, a Ferrari Utility Vehicle. Call it what you want, we’re just a little sad that the short but glorious age of shooting breaks from Maranello has made way for yet another SUV.

Audi RS2 Avant

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‘Everyone else is doing it, why can’t we?’ someone at Audi must have said at a product planning meeting in the early 1990s. The German brand, despite its motorsport successes in rallying, did not have a performance division. BMW had M and Mercedes-Benz had a collaboration with AMG, both turning out low-volume, high-performing versions of otherwise ordinary cars.

Audi had already dabbled with a high-po wagon, with 1991’s S2 Avant hinting at what lay ahead. Its performance recipe looks familiar in retrospect – a turbocharged 2.2-litre five-pot matched with a five-speed manual sending power to all four wheels via Audi’s fabled quattro AWD system, all cloaked in Audi’s 80 Avant two-box design.

But Ingolstadt had bigger dreams and behind the scenes had enlisted the help of Porsche to help create something truly special. The dreamwork took place at Audi’s Salzgitter plant where Porsche’s engineers got to work on the existing 2.2-litre five-banger from the S2.

A bigger KKK turbocharger with 1.4 bar boost was the headline act but so too a bigger intercooler, higher flow fuel-injectors, revised camshaft, modified induction setup and low-pressure exhaust system. The end result? Try 232kW and 410Nm of five-cylinder magic.

Final assembly took place at Porsche’s Rossle-Bau plant, and in 1994, the Audi RS2 Avant debuted for the public.

Keen observers will have noted the 17-inch alloy wheels which came straight off the 964 generation 911 Turbo. Keener observers still, will have spotted the Porsche badging on the grille, tailgate and brake calipers. And a quick scan of the spec sheet would reveal a 0-100km/h claim of 4.8 seconds, quicker than Porsche 911 Carrera of the day and on par with 911 Turbo. Remarkable.

The RS2 Avant was the first Audi to wear the ‘RS’ badge and helped establish Audi as a genuine player, up there with M and AMG. Its legacy can still be felt today, each successive ‘RS’ model owing its existence to that first little Nogaro Blue station wagon.

Citroen DS Break

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It’s hard to imagine today a time when French carmaker Citroen was one of the most innovative and daring manufacturers of automobiles on the planet.

Nothing underscores this more than the two extremes of engineering Citroen gave to the world. In one corner, the bare-bones 2CV, a utilitarian compact car designed for farm work and not much else.
At the other end, the Citroen DS, the space-age saloon that became a symbol of not just French style, but also innovation.

So successful was the DS when it was launched at the 1955 Paris motor show, by the end of the first day Citroen was holding some 12,000 customer orders. Ten days later, by the end of the show, DS deposits ran to 80,000, a record that stood until 2016 when the Tesla Model 3 attracted 115,000 first-day deposits.

Following on from its motor show hype, it was inevitable that Citroen would expand the range with a station wagon and convertible joining the DS line-up in 1958 and 1960 respectively.

The Break, aka Safari, Wagon, Estate and Station-Wagon, didn’t stray far from the DS technological and design playbook with the French brand’s revolutionary self-levelling hydropneumatic suspension, hydraulic-powered brakes, and futurist styling setting it apart from its contemporaries, which seemed positively antediluvian in comparison.

Inside, the Break modelled the French chic of its Berline (sedan) counterpart, with the DS’s signature single-spoke steering wheel the centrepiece. Practicality ran to seating for five, six, seven or even eight – depending on the model and options – while the completely flat floor in the cargo area could hold a 540kg payload.

Performance was sluggish at best, with even the most powerful iteration of Citroen’s overhead-valve inline four-cylinder only able to muster around 85kW.

But any reluctance in performance was made up for with the sheer volume of space in the cabin and the unparalleled ride comfort afforded by that trick hydraulic suspension. So good was the self-levelling suspension that TV stations, most notably the BBC, pressed the ID Break into service as the perfect camera car for filming while on the move.

Production ended in 1975, the very last car to roll off Citroen’s Paris production line, a DS23 Break.

BMW E34 M5 Touring

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It wasn’t quite the first hot rod station wagon to come from one of Germany’s ‘Big Three’, but the BMW E34 M5 Touring is the first to hail directly from a mainstream manufacturer as against a third-party-albeit-factory-approved tuning house (we’re looking at you pre-Mercedes-Benz owned AMG and your glorious one-off W124-based AMG ‘Hammer’ Estate).

When the E34 M5 Touring rolled out of BMW’s M division Garching skunkworks in 1992, it set a template and benchmark for every hot wagon that followed.

It was a simple recipe then, as it remains now. Take an otherwise staid and practical family
station wagon, and let your finest motorsport engineers sprinkle it liberally with the kind of fairy dust usually reserved for hot sedans and hotter sportscars.

In the case of the OG M5 Touring, the fairy dust sprinklers transplanted BMW’s mighty 3.8-litre inline six from the M5 sedan under the bonnet, an engine that could trace its lineage right back to the original M1. That motor-sport derived six was initially matched with a five-speed manual transmission, updated to a Getrag six-speed manual for the 1994 model year.

With 250kW and 400Nm available from an injudicious use of the right foot, the family lugger could complete the dash from 0-100km/h in 5.9 seconds while top speed was limited to 250km/h, all in a package that boasted 460L/1610L of cargo area.

Just 891 E34 M5 Tourings were produced from 1992-95, all of them left-hand drive. Each car was built by hand in Garching and took two weeks to complete. It was the last M car built by hand.

Volvo 850R

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If ever a car brand needed a glow-up in the 1990s, it was Volvo. Decades of conservative design and an unrelenting focus on safety, had dulled Volvo’s image to the point of cardigan-wearing, tissue-box-carrying conservatism. That was reflected in the vehicle offering from the Swedish brand, a succession of cars and wagons that prioritised function over form, earning them the unflattering sobriquet, ‘bricks on wheels’.

But that all changed in the mid-1990s when Volvo, looking to cast off the fuddy-duddy image, released the 850 T-5R, a limited run of sedans and station wagons designed to show the world that Volvos could, in fact, be fun.

It worked too, the T-5R powered by a cracker of a turbocharged inline five-cylinder making a healthy 181kW and 340Nm. Mated to either a five-speed manual or four-speed auto, the T-5R completed the dash from 0-100km/h in 6.7 seconds (auto) or 7.5 seconds (manual) which, while not as quick as some of its hot-tuned contemporaries, did make you sit up and take notice.

Sure, the boxy styling of Volvos past remained, but the T-5R’s makeover included a racy bodykit complete with aggressive splitters, side sills, wings and 17-inch alloys. Volvo lowered the suspension too, its aggressive stance showing the boxy Estate in its best light.

In a stroke of marketing genius, Volvo enlisted the help of Tom Walkinshaw Racing to contest the 1994 British Touring Car Championship with a pair of 850 Estates, and while results were middling at best, the ‘brick on wheels’ racers garnered headlines and featured heavily in media coverage, helping cure Volvo of its conservative malaise.

The limited run of 5000 sedans and wagons quickly sold out and by 1996, buoyed by its success, Volvo extended the 850 T-5R’s shelf life. Now called simply the 850 R, the superwagon was fitted with a reworked version of the 2.3-litre five-cylinder engine, now with a bigger turbocharger, and revised intercooler and turbo manifold. Outputs were boosted too, to 184kW and 350Nm.

It became a short-lived (production ran for just two years, 1997-97) statement of intent, consigning the ‘Brick on wheels’ epithet to the history books.

Buick Roadmaster Estate

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It wasn’t quite the longest station wagon ever made, but dagnabit did the Buick Roadmaster
Estate stretch the limits of what was possible.

Measuring over 5.5 metres long (longer than a current day Ford Ranger dual-cab and dwarfed, in wagon terms, by the 1975 Buick Estate, which at 5887mm holds the distinction as the longest ever station wagon) the Roadmaster graced the US’s highways and prowled American Suburbia in the 1990s in all its standard-fit faux-wood-panelled glory.

Powered by a succession of V8 engines throughout its model life, the apogee came right at the end when General Motors sandwiched the C4 Corvette’s 5.7-litre LT1 V8 under that long, long bonnet for the 1994 model year. Paired with a dual exhaust system, power increased to 194kW (up 60kW over the outgoing 5.0-litre small block V8) while the benchmark 0-100km/h time was dispatched in a touch over seven seconds.

With seating for eight, and the ability to tow 2300kg (with the optional factory-fitted towing package), the Buick Roadmaster Estate offered a glimpse, somewhat ironically as it turned out, into a future where SUVs would take over as the de facto family hauler.

Axed in 1996 to make way on production lines for the ever-increasing demand for SUVs, the Buick Roadmaster Estate signalled the end of America’s love affair with station wagons, going down in history as what should have been the last wagon produced by Americans for Americans.

A reprieve came from 2004-2008 when Dodge gave released the Magnum, a high-powered station wagon based on the Chrysler 300 platform. Cadillac too got in on the act, its supercharged V8-powered CTS-V wagon in production in 2001. But it struggled for sales in a market out of love with wagons and in 2014 GM pulled the pin. The era of American wagons was over.

Holden VE Commodore SS Sportwagon

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The Holden VE Commodore Sportwagon was a breath of fresh air when it made its grand entrance in 2008 – some two years after its three-box counterpart – eschewing the previously rigid lines and boxy profile of its Commodore long-roof predecessors to embrace tougher, sleeker, and, well, sportier demeanour.

And it needed to. By GM-H’s own admission, around 90 per cent of sales of the Sportwagon’s VZ Commodore predecessor were fleet sales. The ultimate rep mobile, then, a blunt, no-frills design that sparked little passion other than for the accountants tasked with keeping a close eye on company expenditure.

But the Sportwagon was something else again. Here, finally, was a station wagon that owners could look on with pride, a practical family lugger that blended all the best bits of the VE Commodore’s design – such as those pumped up wheel arches – with a sloping roofline leading to a sharply-angled tailgate. The VE Commodore Sportwagon looked nothing like its boxy predecessors.

Emphasing GM-H’s intent, the Sportwagon came with a choice of Aussie GM iron including the boggo 180kW/330Nm V6, the uprated higher output (195kW/340Nm) V6, and the 6.0-litre V8 good for 270kW and 530Nm in SS and SS-V models.

HSV wasn’t immune to the charms of the latest Commodore long-roofer, cramming more powerful LS2 V8s under the bonnet and uprating the chassis and suspension to cope with the extra power.

Sure, the R8 Clubsport Tourer might not have had the finesse of Euro performance estate rivals, but it brought Aussie muscle car swagger to take on the world’s best station wagons.

This article first appeared in the January 2026 issue of Wheels. Subscribe here and gain access to 12 issues for $109 plus online access to every Wheels issue since 1953.