O Scale Motor Vehicle Chronicle June

It's funny, but, growing up, the station wagon was considered the family workhorse, hauling kids, pets, groceries, lumber, fertilizer, grandma and grandpa, and anything else that could be crammed in, or tied on to, and then brought home.  

Today, I view them as a thing of beauty, to be desired and gazed upon on the internet.  That is, because, at the prices being asked for these little wonders, one could buy a good used locomotive, and, if you want half a dozen, well the cost would equal that of a new, super electronic marvel.  

Yes, station wagons are very nice, and I do have a few of the far less expensive models in my collection, but the Buicks and some others are far beyond my means as they would have been back in the day.

Richard,

Another fantastic job. My parents bought 57 Oldsmobile Wagon. It was the first one they ever owned with air conditioning. I never will forget when they used it as a trade-in on a new 62 Cadillac Sedan de Ville. Now, those were the days of cheap gas.

As a kid growing up in the fifties, I remember how little kids loved to sit in the back of a station wagon - sort of like a big playpen. In fourth and fifth grade I was in a car pool going to school and one of the mothers had a Ford wagon. The kids would take turns who got to sit in the back. Of course, this was before seat belts were in every car and before you could get arrested for letting a kid not wear one. This was also when it would be normal to see a bunch of kids in the bed of a pickup truck.

I don't have a lot of 1/43 station wagons. One I can add to Richard's list is a '56 Chevy Nomad by Franklin Mint. It's one of FM's better pieces, and the '56 Chevy has always been neglected by model builders in favor of the '55 and '57. Apart from that, I have a black and red NEO '57 Buick like the one in Richard's photo, some inexpensive '55 and '57 Nomads, the Road Champs '55 Safari, and a couple of Ford woodies. 

I've always liked two-door wagons like the Nomad, even though they are kind of impractical. I'd love to have one now, with some mechanical updates - it would make a great car for road trips. Plenty of room for luggage, you can sleep in the back in a pinch, and a great cool factor. Too expensive to contemplate, though, given what a good Nomad fetches on the collector market. 

MTH made a Rail King Milwaukee Road auto carrier with four '57 Nomads. For me that was a must-have - my favorite railroad with four iconic Chevys. As far as I recall, that's the only 0 gauge auto carrier with wagons. It's not scale, of course, but a string of them looks good in a train. 

For five years during my "formative years" in the 1950s I lived in Salt Lake City: my dad was transferred there as geophysicist supervisor with a big oil company.  Due to the higher Mormon population there, the city had a very significantly higher average number of kids per household than nationwide, and as a result the city had (or at least I was told it had) the highest percentage of station wagons - the mini-van of the 1950s - on city streets of any town in the US.  I certainly believed that.  Nearly every family in our neighborhood had at least one.

Of the cars pictured above, I have the '54 Jeep and Buick,  and also a Trabant that looks uncannily like the Crosley.  I also have a 55 Chrysler woody wagon and an early Ford woody, too. 

 In addition to some pre-1920 models I got this week (posted elsewhere) while bargain shopping, I got three models this week, two of which will go on the layout at times. 

This Best-of-Show resin Plymouth Valiant is exactly a model of my first car: the very model and exterior color.  I took it apart and repainted the interior the proper two-tone black and white of the reupholstery kit I installed when I bought my Valiant, well-worn, in '67.  It will be on the layout whenever I do "1960s."

This '98 Camaro road Champs model below will never be on the layout since I do nothing later than early '60s, but I picked it up at a TCA swap meet last Sunday, because I owned it, too, trading an 18-month old Mercedes (worst car I ever owned, never a day when everything worked right on it) for it, ew, even-steven.   It went six years with everything working - never back to the dealer once.  My son and I eventually blew the stock engine (250+ shot of nitrous at the 'strip, bent the rods) but replaced the engine with a built one.  When we finally sold it, it was still streetable (barely) but could do high nines in the quarter, with alot of drama.

This lovely Best-of-Show Resin 1953 Studebaker Commander is a jewel and will be on the layout a lot.  In my opinion it is a better model than the Brooklin model of the same car, and yet for only half the price.  Just a lovely model of a car I think is terribly underrated.  It was gorgeous (remember, this is a 1953 model) and fast for the time: I think if I were transported back to '53, given everything then, I'd probably drive one of these.

I just have three model wagons, two Rextoy 1935 Fords and a Matchbox 1930 Model A

Ford, with my eye out for the Brooklin 1940 Pontiac (nothing after 1940 is allowed).  The one real wagon I owned was a 1962 Ford Fairlane bought in a U.S. govt.

auction, dirt cheap.  It was custom ordered with rear doors welded shut, no rear seat

upholstery and back seat permanently locked down.  It was used by Census Bureau to pick up mail from RR station.  I used it in an out of state job change and frequent camping trips to Carlisle and Hershey car shows and on New England vacations.  It had the 260 V-8 with three on the tree, so govt. employees back then had to know how to drive.

Interesting car!  Were you able to unweld and such to make the car more normal and the back useable?  

The 260 was a nice little engine, by the way, although I must admit what I liked about it most, way back when, is that whereever it fit, a Hi-Po 289 was almost certain to drop in within any fuss, too. 

There was no way to unweld the doors, and I don't really remember if they were welded or bolted closed, or if the cracks were filled...I now think they were bolted

and the cracks were not filled.  The car came that way on govt. contract, which made

it a two door wagon, and I had no use for a rear seat, and used it to move out of

state, set up in flea markets, and camp in, and, for me, it was  highly useable.  It was perfect for my purposes the way it was, all painted in government (battleship) gray.  It was my cheap regular gas second car, and the first, a 1967 383 Barracuda, was saved from racking up the miles.

Ah, then it was definitely worth putting up with.  Those were very cool cars.  

My favorite wagon was a huge '76 Chevy Caprice Estate with fake wood and a "clamshell" tailgate (power window went up, power tailgate rotated down into the body). The rear 3rd seat faced to the rear, which had my kids making faces and waving to the car behind us. Once, while parked, a small Japanese car plowed into the rear. The small car's front was bashed in, but you couldn't see any damage to my Chevy.

I had a 73 Vega Wagon with a 350 for years and I drove it all the time. 

Beware the 55 Chevy wagon at CVS pharmacy, It looks right in the store, when you get it home its a whole different scale and to big.

Great subject! I still own a 63 Galaxie Country Sedan that my dad bought brand new with special order buckets and center console, power seat and windows, 352 automatic, power steering and a multitude of extra options. I was brought home from the hospital when I was born in this car! Now it has been completely restored except it now has a monster 428 in it that almost gets the front wheels off the ground! I would love to find a model of this car to modify and make it look as it is now for my future layout. Wagons are becoming more popular and expensive nowadays.