Need Some Privacy? Just Get in the Car
Station wagons and impractical convertibles are being pushed out of the global auto market, but ever-popular SUVs might not end up meeting passengers’ desires.
Point A to Point B, life in between.
Photographer: Tasneem Alsultan/Bloomberg
Volkswagen AG announced that 2019 would be the last model year the Golf SportWagen and Alltrack, the automaker’s station wagons, will be produced for the U.S. The German company has sold wagons in the U.S. since 1966, starting with the Type 3 “Squareback” model. “Customers are speaking clearly about their preferences — it’s an SUV world now,” the company said in a news release. The data agree with VW, as I noted last year.
As wagon models become scarce and the U.S. becomes more enamored of sport utility vehicles, there’s another type of car that’s going away, too: the convertible. Five years ago, convertibles made up less than a percent of U.S. auto sales, according to Edmunds; through the first four months of this year, they were barely six-tenths of a percent of total sales.