2005 Luxury AWD Wagons

The term "station wagon" comes from the vehicle's first use as a conveyance to carry people and their belongings to and from railroad stations. Built from (usually) lengthened rear-drive sedan chassis, these "depot hacks," as they sometimes were called, became the four-wheeled embodiment of suburban American harmony. Later, truck-based, four-wheel-drive sport/utilities supplanted the dear old wagons, offering at least the promise of adventure beyond one's neighborhood. Fast forward to oil-reliant 2004, and wagons are again making a strong case for themselves. Modern wagons provide most of the cargo capacity sport/utility owners would ever need, plus the all-wheel-driving excitement and foul-weather capability SUVs offer but with considerably better fuel efficiency.

While the Saab 9-2x and Volvo V50 are based on sedans, those sedans are in a way someone else's--though one might say global platforms are everybody's and nobody's to claim. The Saab 9-2x comes from a distant though related corporate family member, the Subaru Impreza WRX wagon, and is actually built in Japan. General Motors has a 100-percent equity share in Saab and owns 20 percent of Subaru, thus the GM Saabaru. We were over the moon when Subaru finally brought the WRX to our market in 2002, so Saab comes in holding a pretty good hand with its 9-2x.

The Volvo V50 wagon (and S40 sedan) is our second exposure, after the Mazda3, to the forthcoming second-generation Ford Focus architecture on sale in Europe. Ford owns Volvo and Mazda and wisely selected this outstanding world-car platform to underpin several of its models, including the V50. It turns out this foundation is a solid place to build a vehicle, which is actually manufactured in Belgium. So we present the Ford Volcus.

Any way you choose to look at this twosome--Swedish-badged Saab versus Swedish-badged Volvo, GM versus Ford, Japanese wagon versus Belgian wagon--they make an interesting couple. Let's get at them.