My Black Brick

Check out the full evolution here.

Mecedes Benz will be premiering a new shooting brake concept this week in Beijing. Which raises a couple of questions: When does a station wagon turn into a “Brake“? And is it “Brake” or “Break”?

According to the Times,  “the brake body style…in strictest terms is a coupe with a squared-off back.” That slick vehicle pictured above doesn’t look like it started from a  coupe, unless you buy into the Daimler marketing-speak that refers to the base  CLS as a 4 door coupe.

As for the second question, it depends on which side of the English Channel you reside. In England it’s “Brake”, in France it’s “Break”. I’m guessing in the US it’ll be offered in gray, while in the UK it’ll be grey.

It’s Checker Motors Appreciation Week over at Truth About Cars and they’ve triggered some bad flashbacks of Mr T and the Barbarian Brothers in 1993′s DC Cab. I didn’t realize Checker Motors made wagons, but I’m sure they worked great for cabs.

The 8-door Aerobus pictured above seems dropped in from another planet, however. Before there were Hummer H3 limos driving kids to their prom at the Jersey Shore, there was the Checker Motors Aerobus driving around vacation resorts and large airports. Unlike a limousine, the extended wheelbase Aerobus had forward facing bench seats, which is why it needed so many damn doors.

The Checker Aerobus Resource has some awesome pics of reader rides as well as a list of specs. Built from 1966 to 1974, this beast ran on a 200 hp 350ci V8. There were 6 door and 8 door versions built, with the 8 door having a 12 passenger capacity and a curb weight of 4905 lbs.

As if the original wasn’t long enough, this dude dropped $150k to combine two aerobuses, constructing a 14 door behemoth.

The US Army used this one to transport officials on a base in the US Southwest. Roof bins have been added because I guess there wasn’t enough room?

According to a memo leaked to Jalopnik, the Volvo V70 will not be offered in North America after 2010. And while the V50 will still be available, its time may be numbered. That means the name “Volvo” may no longer be synonymous with “station wagon.”

I remember checking out the NY Auto show 4 or 5 years ago and being surprised that there was no V70 on display. I guess they had started the process of phasing it out back then. I was told that the XC70 was just like the V70, but, I’m sorry, it’s not. I don’t count the XC70 as a wagon, and Jalopnik agrees. However, Volvo execs feel that “the personality of the XC70 is a good fit for today’s lifestyles.” To which commenter chathamh responds:

If the current product lineup of most manufacturers was an accurate reflection of American lifestyles, most Americans would spend their free time fording creeks, hauling trailers, powering through snow drifts and traversing miles of unpaved mountain trails.

Today’s manufacturers, at least for cars in the US market, don’t understand that not everyone wants to have to choose between a vanilla mid-sized sedan and a blinged out monster truck. I’ve purchased 2 cars in my life, a 745t and my current 245. What brought me to Volvo wasn’t their “personality”. It was the fact that they made really nice station wagons, vehicles that had great carrying capacity, had a relatively low center of gravity and drove like cars. Europeans understand this. In my visits to Germany and France I’m always impressed that they had such beautiful, sleek wagons. They understand that you can increase carrying capacity without raising the vehicle sky-high, tacking on knobby tires and forcing the driver to sit upright. That’s why Volvo will still be making the V70 for the European market.

This news from Volvo goes hand-in-hand with what’s happened to Subaru’s once sexy Legacy wagon. They dropped it a few years ago in favor of the Outback, and then they converted the Outback into a bloated crossover SUV. Someone in my neighborhood just got one of these abominations and I shudder every time I walk by it. Doesn’t Subaru already litter our aesthetic landscape enough with the Tribeca? How is the Outback any different?

Jalopnik posted a heart-warming eulogy to the Volvo wagon, a historic look back at the rise and sudden fall of the iconic boxy brick. RIP.

PS. I hope to wake up tomorrow and find this was all a horrible nightmare. Or maybe I should just get a life, because I’m not in the market for a new car anyway, and I’ll probably drive my precious 245 into my grave!

Don’t have enough room in the trunk of your crusty Impala? Time for a slick conversion. American ingenuity at its finest.

Via thereifixedit.com

Run, don’t walk, to Eberhard Thiesen Automobile Raritaten to pickup the sweet Roos Engineering Aston Martin Lagonda shooting break conversion. It’s a steal at only $270k. Sure, it ain’t a DB9, but with all that room in the boot you’ll be able to carry plenty of cases of Busch Light from Costco, and do it in style. Act now, supplies are limited to… one.

via Daddytypes

Great comment from the Jalopnik QOTD, “What Modern Car Will You Have to Explain to Your Kids?” I had no idea the Passat W8 engine existed. Could the same idea be applied to 2 red-blocks?

Assuming I find a woman desperate/masochistic/imbalanced/whatever enough to settle down and raise a family with (I think I have better chances of growing a third arm at this point.), the resultant offspring would probably be most puzzled by the Volkswagen Passat W8 Wagon.

The conversation would probably go something like this:

Kid: Daddy, what’s that car in the picture?

Me: Well sport/princess, that’s a Volkswagen Passat W8 Wagon.

Kid: What’s the W8 mean?

Me: It was basically two overlapping V4s driving a common crankshaft.

Kid: Why?

Me: So they could cram eight cylinders under the hood longitudinally and still have room for the all-wheel-drive system.

Kid: But if it was all-wheel-drive and the back was shaped like a box, why not just buy a crossover or something?

Me: Well, some people – including your old man – preferred proper station wagons because they usually handled better and got better fuel economy. Even better when they were available with manual transmissions like this.

Kid: You mean flappy paddles?

Me: No, you had to move the gear lever up or down and left and right while lifting off the gas and pressing down on the clutch pedal to change gear.

Kid: Wow, driving one of those must have been a lot of work. Good thing the government outlawed cars that can’t drive themselves.

Me: Go to your room.

Kid: But-

Me: DON’T “BUT” ME, YOUNG MAN/LADY, GO TO YOUR ROOM!

*Kid runs off crying*

Wife: How can you be that way to our son/daughter?

Me: I have no son/daughter…

*Chugs glass of wine*

So…wanna get freaky later?

In the wet dream of Bob Lutz, the 2010 Cadillacs are a multi-stage rocket blasting across the salt flats under the watchful eye of the NASAesque GM launch team. The new CTS Sportwagon bursts forth as the first stage in a cycle that ends with a new coupe.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I had the please to read Chuck Closterman’s “Eating the Dinosaur“. In it he talks of how, as a culture, we’ve come to accept the lies that the advertising media presents us, and the fact that we don’t take things literally. The media business knows this, and presents products to us with the knowledge that we don’t take them seriously. Advertisers moved from presenting their clients products factually to evoking an impression to the subconscious of how a consumer will feel when they buy their product. We’re at a point now where we know it’s all lies, so advertisers can just present any hyperbolic scenario and know that we won’t think they’re presenting truth; it’s just stuff that looks cool blowing up! Therefore, we get a 264hp V6 station wagon being compared to a rocket burning hundreds of gallons of fuel each second to achieve earth orbit.

BONUS: The first few seconds of this Cadillac ad show a woman grinning as she drives a new SRX. I was pleasantly surprised to recognize Paula Merritt, a woman I knew briefly a couple years ago through a friend in Brooklyn. She used to play drums for Grandma’s Boy (now Bad Girlfriend) before moving to LA to further her modeling career. Looks like she’s doing well. Way to go Paula!

This Pontiac Holden Clubsport has a Corvette V8 engine with 425 hp and 405 ft/lb of torque. Too bad this GM isn’t available in the states.

The Truth About Cars lays waste to the 2010 Outback, claiming it’s moved from being a cool off-road wagon into a cookie-cutter CUV. The last redesign was in 2005 and looked handsome and relatively sleek; not quite as sexy as the Legacy Wagon but still cool. Now it just looks chunky and clunky. Let’s hear what TTAC has to say:

Towering more than four inches higher than its predecessor, spanning two inches more across the beam, standing another awkward inch higher off its tires, the new Outback looks—IS huge. The super-chunk roof rails are grossly exaggerated (until you discover the trick design that allows the crossbars to disconnect and swing 90 degrees to find residence integrated in the longitudinal rails). The rear quarter view screams “Venza!”—which is like shouting “movie” in a crowded firehouse. Curiously, there wasn’t a Tribeca on the showroom floor. Cannibalism avoidance? Either that or the former “flying vagina” was hidden by the swollen Outback.

…

The Outback’s ergonomics couldn’t be further from Audi’s if they were designed by Daewoo. Every button on the Outback’s dash now requires reading glasses, a precise finger, and a map. Twin Big Gulps and a swollen armrest bin take precedence over the handbrake, which has been demoted to a tiny button buried left of the steering column amidst a myriad of other tiny, illegible, and obstructed switches for stability control, external mirrors, trunk release, and a bunch of curious blanks. To compensate, the twin steering column stalks are chunkier. Thanks. So much.

From TTAC