As the title says, these are the rarest wagons I could find among my photos, starting with this Alfa Romeo Giulia wagon. According to this history of Alfa Romeo wagons by Don Andreina, there were 200-500 wagons like this built including versions with side windows instead of the blocked-off treatment seen here.
Come with me for a fairly random tour of some not very often seen wagons!
Is it possible that this 1963 Glas Isar K700 Royal, which runs a 30hp 688cc air-cooled flat-twin. Glas was later taken over by BMW, and the Isar is slightly similar in format to the BMW i3, which also has a flat twin engine as the extended-range option.
With over 33,000 of these 1955-61 Ford Escort wagons (or estates if we are speaking British) built I’m possibly stretching things by including this, but rest assured they will be very thin on the ground 60 years later! Not to mention that Ford built 345,000 of the Anglia 100E that this is based on. Echoing US model ranges, there was also a fancier Squire version! The Escort name would return in 1968 of course.
This Mercedes W116 (or should it now be S116?) S-class wagon definitely qualifies as rare, with only 80 built by Crayford. I think the chrome rain gutter from the sedan does a disservice to the integration of the wagon extension, the window lines match fairly well but the chrome trim does not.
Staying in Germany, but a much more conventional car is this Borgward Isabella. You can also see the rear of an Isabella coupe, which is very stylish in a front-engined Karmann Ghia sort of way.
This 1956-62 Ford Zephyr Mark II wagon is a little more common, but is not the English version but rather the Australian one. Instead of a side-hinged door of the UK version it has a conventional tailgate.
To accompany the rather poor photo from a recent genuine CC sighting) here is another view of the same car 8 years ago!
A contemporary of the Zephyr was the Humber Super Snipe, which represented only the second wagon that Humber had built, and not a common one for what was a reasonably expensive car that you would typically see a bank manager driving.
Hang on I hear you say, what is so rare about a Ford wagon? Well have a closer look through the windshield and you will see the steering wheel on the right-hand side. This car was assembled in Australia, and the full-size Fords were no longer big sellers out here which makes the wagons quite rare. As a Ranch Wagon it would have a 332 cid V8 and three-speed manual.
Likewise this 197-something Impala wagon has its wheel on the ‘correct’ side… I think this indicates it has been in Australia likely since the 1970s, as there were some businesses that converted new or near-new cars after the factory ceased CKD assembly and imports. A more recent import would not need to be converted, and the cost of converting a car to RHD was considerable. It is also wearing a set of local Globe Bathurst alloy wheels.
I dare say this one is fairly rare in North America as well as Australia – a 1964/65 Studebaker Daytona Wagonaire, again RHD. I am not sure whether the roof would have been fixed at this stage, as apparently the sliding version was dropped at different points of the production run, and I don’t know about Australian-assembled cars. The black-and-white registration plate looks to be original for the era, which usually indicates continuous registration history.
I think a 1955 Chevrolet Nomad belongs here.
As does a pillarless wagon! This is a 1957 Oldsmobile 88 Fiesta.
Another one I am going to assume is pretty rare is the Simca Aronde P60, which I caught just as it was driving away. Again a miniature American-styled car, and very pretty even if I can’t show you the front.
The final version of the Standard Vanguard was the 1958-61 Vignale, styled by the Italian coachbuilders with input from Michelotti, who would be no stranger to future Triumphs (also owned by the Standard Motor Co.). These cars shared the 2.1-litre 4-cylinder with Triumph sports cars among others.
Something unusual is this stretched XY model Ford Falcon station wagon, that appears to have been built for airport duty or similar, with its three rows of forward-facing seats. You can see how much has been added to the wheelbase.
I’m not sure how rare it is (or was originally), but this 1970-73 Mazda 1300 wagon is one I think not many of you will have seen. There was also a 5-door version too, that was apparently more widely exported than the 3-door.
The big-brother 1500 (or 1800 in some markets) is a very nice design though – and one you definitely don’t see very often in wagon form.
I will finish with this 1953 FJ Holden wagon – possibly one of the rarest wagons to be featured this week, one of only six built by Cordell motor body builders in Hampton, Melbourne, Victoria.
There was also a Holden prototype wagon, but probably because this was still the period where Holden were struggling to build enough vehicles to meet demand the body style would not be offered by the factory until the next generation. They did sell a panel van (aka sedan delivery) which had only 2 doors.
I hope you have enjoyed this trip through some wagon rarities!
Great stuff and gosh that Mazda is pretty. I would guess an Italian design house penned it, if I had to bet I’d say, Pinnfarina but I didn’t think they worked with Mazda.
Close; it was Giorgetto Giugiaro, when he worked at Bertone, which signed a contract with Mazda in 1962. I’ve always had a soft spot for the Luce ever since I saw a couple in Vienna in the 60s.
A friend in Hobart TAS has quite a collection of them no wagons though last I saw him.
+1 Extremely handsome cars!!
+2 I’ve got a profile of these coming up that deals with the urban myth that they were (or were not) a rejected Alfa proposal.
Thanks for the answer Paul, Giugiaro, I should have known, what a genius.
The glasshouse of the 1500 Mazda has something of the Range Rover look or, more prosaically, Hillman Arrow/Hunter.
I had one of these Mazda wagons in the late seventies. My idiot brother in law owned it. It blew the head gasket and he let it set up until the engine was rusted solid. I bought it and put the engine from a Ford Courier in. They were the same engine. The engine from a junk yard had a blown head gasket too. It was not rusted to the point of being ruined. I pulled the head, had it milled and put in a new head gasket. I drove the car for a couple of years and sold it for more than I had in it. I enjoyed it, as I have enjoyed most of the cars over the years.
The Mazda 1500/1800 was pretty common around Vancouver at that time, even in wagon format. I always thought it was one of the nicest-looking cars on the market.
Just saw this street-rodded Borgward Isabella wagon this past weekend here in Maryland! Too bad it was not restored.
That Holden wagon looks like a 7/8ths scale compilation of Chevy, Buick, and Pontiac parts.
The Falcon with a stretched wheelbase looks wild. It looks long enough to have room for 4 sets of seats.
I have seen both Mazda wagons though I’m not sure if it was here in the ‘states or on trips to Japan.
I soooo want a hardtop wagon, preferably a Mercury, as I don’t care for this Olds.
Lots of terrific finds there. Thanks!
Nice collection of wagons. Are wagons still fairly popular in Oz today?
They are fairly popular, I would say more than the US but less than Europe and as in other markets CUV/SUVs have taken a lot of sales. The highest selling wagon would be the Holden Commodore I think.
We do have a fairly good selection to choose from, with most wagon versions available if they exist, exceptions would be the Ford Focus and Toyota Auris/Corolla wagons that are sold in Europe but not here.
Love the Mazdas particularly, but that S-class Benz conversion is also compelling.
I’ll see your rare wagons and raise you one. 1973 Chevelle SS wagon, the only year the wagon was offered in “SS” form. Best guess that only a few hundred SS wagons were produced, though no official numbers as it was an option package rather than a separate model by then.
Great find! I knew these existed “in theory” but I always had some doubts as to whether or not anybody actually ordered one.
Now that that’s settled, I wonder if anyone checked the “SS” and “454” boxes on their woodgrained ’73 Malibu Estate…
Did Mopar ever make a high impact coloured wagon? A Moulin Rouge 70 Coronet wagon with a 440 6 pack please!
Nice one Chris. Holden did a limited edition (500 or so) Commodore SS wagon about 10 years ago, and since 2010 or so it has been a regular model, initially available as a 6-speed manual too!
Way cool. Something for everyone here. The two that pop out for me are:
* The RHD ’57 Olds Fiesta may be the rarest car here. Quite possibly one of one on the planet with RHD.
* The three row extended Falcon is sort of the minivan / large SUV prototype. That would have been an extremely useful vehicle for large families, three decent rows of usable forward facing seats and there is still a considerable cargo area behind the third row. The Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser covered extensively yesterday came close to this, but the third row and cargo area would have been lacking by comparison. This Falcon seems to pull off the concept while remaining a manageable size.
The extended wagon is a coach-built job for commercial use, it did not come from the factory of course. For starters it would not fit in a standard garage or parking space!
Ford did later experiment with a 3-row Vista Cruiser (or Peugeot) style wagon for the 1988 EA model, but ended up with a normal 2-row configuration. A shame.
Great selections! That Borgward Isabella has an early 50s Mopar vibe to it.
That stretched Falcon is really cool, as are those Mazdas. And that 1963 Glas is like a toy version of a 56 American Buick
The hard top Olds Fiesta wagon is wicked cool…I want!!
I guess we’ll have to share it!
A most interesting selection of station wagons.
I found this photo online of the quite rare 1957 Mercury 2-door hardtop station wagon. There were 2258 produced.
Gorgeous,I really like 55-59 Mercuries
That’s a very nice selection of rare wagons.
I’d think the DKW Sonderklasse Universal would fit in here as well.
Rare in the U.S. but DKW built a lot of them, and in South America they stayed in production up until 1969(!)
Brazilian DKW-Vemag Vemaguet:
Nice!
IMO the Aussie Zephyr/Zodiac wagon was better looking than the UK one which had (besides the single rear door) a Rambler-style stepped roof allowing the retention of the stock roof pressing, not to mention rear doors, in their entirety.
Likewise the Simca wagon was coachbuilt from a sedan while Simca offered a factory-built model in France with many more unique pressings, including being a two-door in a line with no two-door sedan!
Both point to the cost of low-series bodywork in postwar Australia being relatively low, as does the fact that the Holden wagon is also coachbuilt from a sedan rather than them simply building a two-door wagon by putting windows and seats into the panel van.
I suspect they may have used a panel van roof and some other panels as a starting point for the wagon add-on. Not sure about the cost though – only 6 were built so it can’t have been cheap!
Toyota also made a two door wagon in the early 70s,but I forgot what model it was.When I was a teen, I used to work at a laundry that also sold refrigerators and washers, and we had this Toyota and a Mazda rotary wagon as delivery vehicles. The owner would let me take the Toyota home for the weekends. It was a fun car to drive with its 3 speed stick, and it had an AM_FM radio too. I remember it being of a fairly high quality and it got excellent gas economy too. I only got to drive the Mazda on rare occasions, but it really went like hell with the three speed auto and the rotary engine. I Could never forget the sound of that engine!
Wasn’t in the first generation Corolla that offered a 2 door wagon?
The RT40 Corona came in two door wagon very rare there is one in Cygnet TAS.
I don’t think we ever had a 2-door Corona wagon in the USA. I checked though and the E20 Corolla (1970-74) did have a 2-door wagon style that was, as far as I can tell, available here.
Wow, never saw one of these… very cool wagon:
…and speaking of rare wagons + Toyotas, apparently the original Toyopet Crown was sold in the U.S. as both a 2-door and 4-door wagon. There was a 4-door on Bringatrailer a few years ago (suicide rear doors, really cool) but the 2-door may be extinct at this point. Toyota only sold about 2,000 Crowns (of all types) over the course of 4 years and only a handful survive:
E20-E70 Corollas were all made in both two- and four-door wagons. Only the two-door E20 was sold in the US; only the four-door of subsequent models were.
64 Corona came in three door as well
Yeah, my grandfather had one of the Corolla 2-door wagons for a time back in the early 80’s. Have to look around to see if I have any pics of it.
Yep thats the only wagon assembled here by Campbell motors.
Love the Zephyr. Love the Nomad. Love wagon week!
+1,never had a wagon(estate in the UK),one day….
Earlier Standard Vanguards were coach built as wagons too and much rarer, The FJ is nice Ive never seen one.
I can’t choose which one I like best .
-Nate
Great selection John. I wonder how many Crayford W116s there are in oz. About 15 years ago I had a look at one for sale in country South Australia. Dark blue and run down, this one here may possibly be it. I agree with you about the detailing on these Crayfords; NQR.
I saw a reference that there were five known and believed to be a couple more. Apparently a panel shop imported at least a couple of conversion kits to do locally too.
A good selection indeed.
On the Mazda wagons, my impression (which may be wrong) was that station wagons for private use didn’t catch on in a significant way in the Japanese market until the ’80s — too expensive for a lot of buyers would be my guess as to why.
There were what we would consider wagon/estate versions of a lot of Japanese cars, but in Japan, they appear to have been sold mainly as vans and generally went to commercial buyers. Of course, since they were basically wagons/estates, it wasn’t a complicated exercise to create better-trimmed wagons for export. For instance, in the early ’70s, Toyota did that with the early Corolla van to create a little two-door wagon for other markets, although a Corolla station wagon as such wasn’t sold in Japan until quite a bit later.
Early NZ Corolla wagons were all two doors 4 door wagons were imported from Aussie Corona and Corolla wagons in later models are part of the Toyota van lineup and not listed as wagons, I took me a while to find my 2.0 diesel corona wagon in their vehicle charts it wasnt listed as a passenger car but as a commercial.
That Alfa is flanked by what will become 2 future CCs: VT and the Terri. The Terri will probably replace the Falcon wagon as tradie machine.
That white Mazda is lovely.
Based on the bumper, tail-lights and trim, I’d say the clamshell is a 74 Impala.
Would the front view help?
Woohoo 74!
Nice, enjoyed the read n view, how long ago was the pics of this Chevy taken, may have to speed up my trip down under 🙂
Beautiful! There was a local pizza place in Brisbane that inexplicably used one of these as a delivery vehicle. It was painted black like a hearse, with a coffin in the back, but otherwise it was stock.
The Zephyr is a later 58 – 62 Loline model unlike the UK models the Aussie version was factory built the UK cars were conversions, Ford Australia actually submitted a new design for the Zephyr to suit Aussie but got knocked back and recieved the Falcon as a consolation prize, it took several models for it to become as good This is the upmarket Zodiac MK3 Estate
Nice rare find Bryce,thanks any further details please?Dad had a Mk3 Zephyr 6 til a drunk driver shunted it into a lamp post(fortunately with no one inside).I learned a lot of new swear words that day!He hated the Mk4 Zodiacs and called them a British Edsel so the Zephyr was replaced with a 62 Falcon 4 door 6 cylinder.My parents were big fans of American cars but until the compacts considered them too big and thirsty for daily drivers.
The little 100E Ford wagons came in 3 flavours or trim models actually Thames was strictly a van where as the Anglia model used the Escort badge and of course with fake wood the Squire topped the heap
DAF 33 Combi.
Not twice as big, DAF 66 Combi.
Wagons took a while to catch on in Japan because they were seen, for the longest time, as vehicles for commercial users. Price couldn’t have been all that much higher for a wagon than a 4 door sedan, so that would not have been a consideration. It didn’t help that Japanese families were, and still are, smaller than most European and American families.
I know a family of 15. So mom, dad and 13 children. Even their Peugeot 505 Break Familiale wasn’t quite big enough, 20 years ago.
A few more that didn’t make the cut – not sure what year/model Mercury?
Rambler (as they were badged in Australia) Matador hearse with a great registration number
Citroen DS Familiale, these are pretty huge inside
1957 Chev
Triumph 2500
Last one, MG ZT-T. I wonder if they did any wagon versions of the V8?
Yes, they did – and also the Rover equivalent.
Even your rejects are great. You should’ve done this in two instalments.
That’s what would have been a ’65 Mercury in the U.S.
Thanks for this great collection of rare wagons.
What a wonderful selection of wagons!
As much as I like the Nomad, I never understood how GM could price it ABOVE a flagship Buick wagon? What, pray tell, was so amazing about the Nomad other than its style?
How about a Crosley wagon.
The Mazda 1300 STBV wagon actually ran from 1971-74 in Australia and a few years longer in Japan. It was preceded by the 1200 wagon which ran from approximately 1968-70. The 2-door variant is far more common in Australia and New Zealand compared to the 4-door model. I know of less then 10 4-doors in Australia and possibly only 2 or 3 that may actually be registered for road use. It is indeed the opposite in Japan where these cars are quite rare and nearly all I have seen in running condition are 4-door vehicles.
Wonderful article , a precious gallery of station wagons . Do not forget to discover the made in Argentina’s Siam Di Tella 1500 Traveller Rural , which was the estate extension of the Brit’s Morris Oxford and Riley 4/72 penned by Pininfarina in the 1960’s