True Or False comes from the type of car that was devopled by Long Island taxicab companies to pick Commuters up from Long Island Railroad stations as well as there luggage?
Don’t know about the LIRR connection, but
“The earliest pre-World War I woodies were truck-based rigs called “depot hacks.” Much like today’s airport courtesy vans, depot hacks shuttled people to and from the train station (now you know the origin of the term “station wagon”). Depot hack operators needed capacity for six or eight people plus their luggage, and it was too expensive for carmakers to tool up steel bodies for such a boutique use; so small coachwork companies filled the need-and built them of wood.”
Wow thats a good one. Me the car nut and I never thought of that. Well all i know is there is no station wagon that can touch the POWER STROKE DIESEL. hehehehe
Adrianspeeder
In one of the early inventories of our farm (one my great-granddad had done in about 1890) there is listed a ‘station wagon’. The purpose for which was, very simply, to go to the station (about 2 and a half miles away) with the milk in the morning, and wait for the grain or whatever else had been ordered to come in on the morning freight. It was a two horse job, four wheel, drag brakes. Bench seat on springs up front, low cargo deck behind.
Hah!
I have a station wagon, and it can kick butt!
340 hp V8 hemi Dodge Magnum.
Also have a 51 Willys Woody Station Wagon.
As to the origin of the term Station Wagon…
Well, if it aint got a Hemi, its just a car…
Ed[:D]
They Built them out of Wood? Frame Too? So how does this explain the fake wood trim on lime green station wagons in the 70s? Like what was GM smoking?[}:)]
Damn. all I have is my dad’s '96 Ram 2500.[:D]
not even a mustang as my name would suggest
Here’s entry from Word Origins:
Station Wagon
This term refers to a car big enough to haul people and luggage to and from a railway station. Originally, it referred to horse-drawn carriages (the term dates to 1894). The term was transferred to automobiles in 1904, and in 1929 the first modern station wagon was designed and marketed under that name.
Here’s another one associated with railroads:
Sabotage
It is suggested by some that this term for wanton destruction derives from striking workers throwing wooden shoes, or sabot, into machinery in order to destroy it. This belief was popularized when it was repeated in one of the Star Trek movies.
Sabotage does indeed derive from the French sabot and from striking workers, but not in the sense suggested. While sabot can mean a wooden shoe, it can also mean a metal shoe or clamp for holding a piece of metal in place (it can also mean a type of anti-tank ammunition, but that’s another story). The second sense is what sabotage is derived from.
Specifically, sabotage comes from the practice by striking French railway workers of cutting the sabot that held railroad tracks in place. The word appears in English in 1910 and early use specifically refers to the French railroad strikers.
…It’s difficult to determine just where the “station wagon” term may have originated…In my little home town located on the Lincoln Highway in Pennsylvania there was a very prominent Hotel…The Hite House…serving Rt. 30 traveliers and B&O passenger traveliers stopping at our depot about a mile away…A “Jitney”, horse drawn…met every passenger train to bring traveliers to the hotel…{Pre-world war I era}…and after that motorized wooden bodied vehicles…some on Model T chassis did the job and so on…The same thing happened many places so where it started, who knows…but I’d wager these vehicles were the beginning of the term use…“Station Wagons”…
I was just noticing how 10 years ago a “station wagon” was almost as hated a vehicle as the mini-vans are now. Devil says, “This is hell kid, you get the mini-van”. But now, many (most) of the new vehicles are in some way really a station wagon. Until recently our Chevy Suburban’s were officially registered with the State as station wagons. As near as I can tell all these new front wheel drive SUV’s (like Chevy Trailblazer) are really just tall station wagons.
Who here really takes there OFF ROAD vehicles off road over mountains and buolders like they do in car comercials[:)][:p]
Does driving through water over the hood, up the side of a flooded interstate over pass during tropical storm Allison count?
How about getting stuck on its side in a ravine in the Texas hill country?
If you want to play in the dirt…get a Jeep.
Ed
Station wagons are alive and well downunder. They have survived the onslaught of four wheel drive vehicles (SUV’s, I think, up over), '“compact” four wheel drive vehicles, multiple passenger vehicles and other designs.
I always wondered where the name came from - the railroad connection is intriguing…
Looks like they call them “Estates” in the U.K. - not sure where that came from…possibly a name for a work type vehicle that was used on an estate (as in land)?
Dave
'95 Merc Sable Wagon, 160k on the digital odometer, no rust on the bod. I’ll drive it anywhere, on paving, that is.
Jay
That’s one of the neatest things I’ve heard all day, I learn all the time here.
A specific English name, as well as “Estate” or “Estate Car” was “Shooting Brake”. I assume that this referred to the vehicle used to take guns and similar out to a “Grouse Shoot” (or whichever other bird was due to be eaten). The use of “Brake” interested me, because this term is used in the UK to refer to baggage cars, relating back to the fitting of “guard’s vans” with handbrakes to be applied on whistle signals from the locomotive. I assume this association continued, so at least one English name related to a rail vehicle rather than the “station”.
Peter
…One little bitty change: Chevy Trailblazer is not front wheel drive…It is either rear wheel or 4-wheel drive. Powered by a state of the art I-6 of 270 hp.
…Ed, install “fording” equipment on that Jeep and go almost anywhere…I drove the military version in the far east across streams by putting it in low transfer and 1st gear and put my feet up on the dash and pulled out the hand throtle and across the water we went kicking sideways but getting to the other side and water around me up to the dash…A bit scary but it made it.
Hmmm, my neighbor’s spins the front wheels on the ice and it sounds like a sewing machine wreching its guts out just to get the vehicle moving from a stop sign. Maybe they got a broken one? I didn’t even consider buying one because of theirs. I just got a blazer, two door. I think it is one of the least “station wagon” looking ones. Its just big enough to fit my HO modular unit in the back.
Quentin,
Wife wont let me get the snorkel for the 95 Wrangler, but she said great on the 51 Willys Wagon, it even has a factory bracket already in place for the snorkel!
Ed