As true auto enthusiasts, there are certain suppositions by which we all must live. Among those- the Miata is the answer to nearly any question; if something moves and it shouldn’t duct tape it – if it isn’t moving and it should WD40 it; and perhaps most importantly, brown RWD/AWD station wagons with manual gearboxes are da’ bomb. That last one is perhaps the most confusing dictum as it most likely derives from some long-sought Oedipal approval buried deep within the Id. Or maybe we just like cars that both haul stuff and haul ass and happen to be brown because there’s nothing funnier than a poop joke. Wo knows?
Regardless of the why, the fact is that many of us do love us a brown RWD wagon with a stick, although some times there may be other factors that render those qualities moot. With that in mind, is there a RWD wagon available in both brown and with a stick that has some aspect that disqualifies it from our ardor?
Image: Greenwood Corvettes
Hooniverse Asks: What Manual-Transmission, RWD, and Possibly Brown Wagon has a Fatal Flaw That Can't be Overcome?
By Robert Emslie
Sep 9, 2015
Jeff Glucker 
Kamil Kaluski
For starters, the engine…
A 13-second Vega likely has a SBC under the hood, not the China Syndrome meltdown 4-banger.
I tried to find a picture of a stock brown Vega wagon – this is as close as I got.
OK, how’s this?
To me, the “can’t be overcome” is the key part of the question. Bolt-in V8 swaps overcome any stock engine problems, especially when they can be performed on a modest budget.
True. The penchant for rusting whilst living in the rust belt is more a “can’t be overcome” than a measly motor issue.
Availability – if I’m lucky, there’s the odd E46 or E60 wagon in my area, but most of them are AWD. Past that, you’re pretty much 20+ years old, which guarantees rust with any daily driver-esque use (which, as far as I’m concerned, is what I want from a stick RWD wagon).
I guess if I had more mechanical inclination, I could try for a Tremec conversion on a Dodge Magnum.
I vote for the 6 speed magnum.
Think of the slowest car you’ve ever driven…and double that slowness.
http://www.oldbug.com/shapi05.jpg
(For the record: speed be damned, I would still drive the wheels off this thing with an annoyed queue trailing behind me)
Looks just like the Type 3 my pop had when I was a kid.
What this needs is a Subaru engine…
I would suggest that nearly any rear engine wagon has a fatal flaw: the high load floor. The engine compartment takes up a lot of the space normally available for cargo, which somewhat negates the advantage of a wagon.
http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/lit/nov63_type3s_german/2.jpg
All of today’s CUVs and even some minivans have the same problem of a high floor, because the folded-down back of the seat defines how high the floor has to be to give a somewhat flat.load space.
Those, in usable state, are rare, as in: 300SL are common cars. There was an article about these in Oldtimer Praxis this year, I forgot the precise numbers, but the survivor rate was depressing. Low tens of cars on the road in Germany..
Psst: Try a 240D, not available as a wagon, but far far slower. think the original VW power levels and easily twice the weight. (from the wiki 64 PS (48 kW) and 101 ft lb. of torque) the VW’s my friends had as kids were race cars next to my 240D, which wasn’t making anything near stock power levels
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3810/14264930482_4d3c4fe8a4.jpg
A sweet Volvo Amazon wagon, but then having to deal with guys like this everytime you want a genuine part…
http://i1.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article2902880.ece/ALTERNATES/s1023/Gnome-collector-Ron-Broomfield.jpg
You can get a Fusion Wagon with a 6-speed manual transmission in Europe. In fact, you can get it in a lovely gold-ish brown colour. You would have to have gobs of money for the federalization or wait 25 years to have that here.
https://www.gforce.ford.com/nas/gforcenaslive/gbr/00r/yya/images/resize618xgbr00ryyar0wr3t(a)(a)rje_1_0.png
Or you could live in a state without inspections and simply swap the part with the VIN on it from an American Fusion into a European Mondeo that’s been imported disassembled in many small shipments, like that one company from Colorado does with Pontiac G8 donors and Holden utes which they even swap to left hand drive.
Is that RWD?
No. Pretty much unanswerable Ask today. The only brown wagon I can come up with with one fatal flaw – they’re not going to build it! – is this FWD concept:
http://o.aolcdn.com/dims-shared/dims3/GLOB/crop/847×572+185+0/resize/628×417!/format/jpg/quality/85/http://o.aolcdn.com/hss/storage/adam/63a0af8dafd895055ef6d74762b0a35f/volvo-concept-estate-4.JPG
Grrrr…no. But then the only answer to your question is “Nothing.”
The Chuck Miller Corvette illustrated above has been for sale in Norway for maybe three years. Nobody’s buying it
http://finncdn.no/mmo/2015/9/vertical-3/07/4/633/866/04_2054893688_xl.jpg
http://finncdn.no/mmo/2015/9/vertical-3/07/4/633/866/04_1388872433_xl.jpg
Still? I remember that I posted this one once when I was new here, and your were like “ah, that one again!”
I believe the price dropped slightly, it’s 34kUSD no…
Yes, it’s been on and off forever. I think the price drop is due to the Norwegian krone losing 30% of its value to the dollar over the course of last year. Makes for some good import deals for Americans. 🙂
Kudos to the Norwegians, then. That thing is HIDEOUS.
I feel a tad sorry for the guy who imported it though. He probably spend a couple of months pay himself, thinking that this was such a cool little oddling. And then nobody wants it…tough spot.
Oddly enough, despite it being an import it looks like it’s sporting a Volvo 740 quad headlight setup.
The correct wagon is Jeepster Commando of course, doodoo brown, wagon top comes off, low production, super cool right !
With suspension designed around 1939, and little changes. the long wheelbase and way more top heavy …Commandos can easily roll over and KILL you very quickly.
I never got the full-on brown manual wagon thing (especially the turbo and/or diesel and/or AWD wing], but 2-door SUVs are OK with me.
Is the corrosion resistance of tissue paper a fatal flaw?
http://onlycarsimages.com/uploads/dodge/dodge-aspen-se/dodge-aspen-se-01.jpg
I’m almost embarrassed by how good I think that looks now.
Imajus leave this here. The fatal flaw is that no matter what you do to it, it’s always going to look like a Pacer wagon.
http://www.motorstown.com/images/amc-pacer-wagon-04.jpg
I want it….bad.
I frankly think the worst thing about the Pacer wagon is how normal they tried to make it look. It’s that clumsy, apologetic “I was only kidding” backtrack that proves you weren’t really as bold and ∅FG as we all hoped you were. Between the raised grille and the conventionally shaped back, it is neither an attractive wagon nor anywhere as spacy-wacky-curvy-cool as the original coupe. If I ever decide to go that direction, I’m going all the way out there.
http://dummidumbwit.files.wordpress.com/2014/11/pacerad.jpg
Trust me, if you get it, you’ll get Bad.
But the ugly duckling has aged well. The wide and light greenhouse as well as the hug-me-or-I’ll-die-ugly front add a lot of character.
Those who praise the Pacers today probably never had to suffer the embarrassment and ignominy of back in the ’70s being a young person having to drive a relative’s Pacer when one’s own car was in the shop. My brother and I both were both traumatized by having to drive Dad’s Pacer when our respective Fiat roadster and Mustang convertible were temporarily laid up. You can look surfer-cool like I did and yet still seem like a dork when you’re driving an Easter egg with windows.
You’re right. To me it’s just an odd exotic. But, to be honest, I’ve been used to be the odd car dork, with my mother driving this when I got my license:
http://nvdimages.motoring.co.uk/500×375/17918.jpg
I couldn’t afford a car of my own before three years or so later, since my parents believed in their kids self-sufficiency and subsidies were frowned upon.
Morris Marina estate?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/09/Morris_Marina_Estate_became_avaliable_later_in_model_life.jpg/1280px-Morris_Marina_Estate_became_avaliable_later_in_model_life.jpg
Easily fixed, though: drop a skip on it from a tower crane.
Weirdly, I always used to think those door handles and wheels were kinda cool, it’s just a shame they were (rather carelessly) stuck onto such a horrible machine. The handles at least resurfaced on, of all things, the Lotus Esprit…
Both my high school girlfriend and my wife (that’s two different women, to be clear) had Pintos as their first car. I taught my high school girlfriend to drive a standard transmission in the sedan version of this, as brown as a …saddle. It was a piece of junk.
http://www.rvharvey.com/images-wagons/121_small.jpg
http://i125.photobucket.com/albums/p76/cdmacdm/Audi_Vooosh.jpg
Least reliable car that I ever piloted was an Audi 5000. Ours had an automatic, but I think that was th only thing that didn’t break.
The car I learned to drive in. Brown wagons mean this to me.
Still one of the nicest gearchanges I’ve ever tried 40 years later.
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/52d46dd9e4b0f63bcb07fa01/52ddb1c3e4b03ab35fd22776/53605b24e4b02647464ab64e/1415918136163/?format=1500w