Before SUVs made them as rare as Siberian Tigers, station wagons seemed to get the most automaker attention when it came to innovation. Whether it was sliding roofs allowing for giraffe transport, tailgates that would make Doug Henning proud with their seeming magic multiple opening options, or rear seats that fold into the floor, wagons were bastions of ingenuity.

Of course, none of that could save them. Their identification with suburban squareness condemned most of them to the annals of history, leaving only a few hip – and mostly foreign – sport wagons to carry the flame. And those that remain to this day don’t seem to enjoy the same level of big brain on brad attention as their predecessors. Sure Audi offers all wheel drive in the A4 wagon, but you can get that in the sedan as well. Volvo – once synonymous with wagons has seemingly given up on not just making them special, but making them at all. Dumb-asses.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t still have Paris, and by Paris I mean a history rich in Magi-gates, remote-actuated rear vent windows, and Vista windows, all wagon-unique features of a by-gone era. You might remember some of those features with the fondness usually reserved for an old baseball mitt, while others of you may be so young that such things are only represented by grainy black and white photos in dog-eared old magazines you found when looking for your dad’s Hustlers. Either way, which feature do you think was the best?

Image source: [kitfoster.com]