Wheels Blog: ‘Wagonmasters’ Celebrates the Classic American Dream Through Station Wagons

Ford Motor Company, via coconv/Flickr An advertisement for Ford’s 1950 Custom Deluxe Station Wagon.

Do you remember the last time you saw someone driving their family around in a gargantuan American station wagon as if they meant it? I’m not talking about a college student driving a load of friends around in granny’s hand-me-down or that weird neighbor who’s all “cold dead hands” about his ultimate suburban driving machine. No, I mean run-of-the-mill families of 4.5 who drive to schools, jobs and doctor appointments with mom and dad up front, a surly teenager or two in the back seat and one to one-and-a-half children way in the back, bouncing around on the rear-facing fold down, making faces at people through the back glass.

It’s probably been a while, if at all, since you’ve seen that, because the age of the full-size station wagon is gone. Not that our taste has drifted toward more diminutive, economical vehicles (the minivans, S.U.V.’s and pickup trucks that supplanted wagons are essentially the same thing). But the classic station wagon that was familiar to American driveways for decades fizzled into oblivion not long after General Motors ceased production in the mid-’90s of the bulbous behemoths better known as the Chevy Caprice and Buick Roadmaster estate wagons.

But there are a handful of those “cold dead hands” wagon aficionados who refuse to let their vehicles go. And now, there’s a documentary film that explores the thinking of these owners, a group every bit as diverse as the families who owned wagons during the golden age of suburban living after World War II. Welcome to the realm of “Wagonmasters.”

The filmmakers, Sam Smartt and Chris Zaluski, Master of Fine Arts students in Wake Forest University’s Documentary Film Program, gained their inspiration for “Wagonmasters” from a 2011 news report announcing Volvo’s discontinuation of its last station wagon. Even though the Volvo was a foreign car and American wagons had been gone for more than a decade, the two documentarians knew the sound of an institution’s death knell when they heard it. But it had sounded with such little pomp that the filmmakers knew they had to dig into this bit of history; a piece of the American dream had changed.

Getting in touch with members of the American Station Wagon Owners Association and, to a lesser extent, the International Station Wagon Club, Mr. Smartt and Mr. Zaluski crisscrossed the country, interviewing several of the 80 or so wagon owners they had cold called. The filmmakers added perspective to the film with news and conference footage, interviews with a couple of historian types and a collection of machines, including one of Ford’s original wood-body wagons to an end-of-the-line Buick Roadmaster.

The film paints a picture of the sort of practical nostalgia lived by the wagon owners the filmmakers encountered. That’s not to say that there weren’t people who went way past practical, spending three times what a car was worth to restore it because it spurred memories of youth (there was definitely one of those). But over all, the cross section of station wagon enthusiasts the filmmakers interviewed were not deterred that station wagons were out of fashion.

Courtesy of Sam Smartt and Chris Zaluski Wayne Cox, a member of the International Station Wagon Club, bought his 1961 Chrysler Newport wagon as a tow rig for hauling other classic wagons.

The almost 40-minute film gets less into the particulars about the actual wagons, being more focused upon the people who love them. Tim Cleary, the association’s flat-talking president, asks, “Is your self image strong enough?” Being one of those who revels in the comfort and utility of the old-school wagon, he can’t understand why anyone would want to buy any other type of car, including his college-age son, admitting on-camera to lightly badgering him to buy one.

Many of the wagon owners interviewed have something important in common with other automotive enthusiasts. They don’t view their cars as merely cars. There’s an affinity for interesting machinery that has cultural and even personal significance, too.

Mr. Smartt and Mr. Zaluski didn’t get to geek out over as many gleaming long-roofs as perhaps they would have liked, although some of the cars and characters not shown in the film showed up later on their Web site.

“There were a lot of great wagons that couldn’t make it into the film,” said Mr. Zaluski. The gleaming, rumbling 1966 Pontiac GTO clone wagon shown in the opening sequence was one of them, but only because Rocky Boyles, the Kernersville, N.C., owner, wasn’t specifically into wagons. Mr. Zaluski said they were more interested in what people like Mr. Cleary, who chose the wagon as a way of life, had to say.

Mr. Smartt and Mr. Zaluski have been screening “Wagonmasters” here and there over the last couple of years, including at the Concours d’Éégance of America in St. John’s, Mich., the Carolina Film and Video Festival and at the Automotive Hall of Fame in Michigan. Their film won best documentary at Carolina, and the screening in Detroit got the attention of the Pulitzer Prize-winning automotive journalist Paul Ingrassia, whose book, “Engines of Change: A History of the American Dream in Fifteen Cars,” hit shelves last year. Mr. Smartt and Mr. Zaluski said they hit it off with Mr. Ingrassia and subsequently bought rights to turn the book into a televisions series. Mr. Zaluski said they’ve just begun the pitch process, which they have a year to complete.

American Motors Corporation, courtesy of the International Station Wagon Club A 1962 advertisement for the Rambler station wagon.

The filmmakers just returned from the College Television Awards in Los Angeles, where “Wagonmasters” won second place.

“We were really happy when we were out in L.A. that someone took notice that it was a good film and a good story,” said Mr. Zaluski. “They saw the deeper meaning.”

They plan on releasing the DVD version of the film by Fathers Day, but will also show at the Northeast Classic Car Museum in Norwich, N.Y., as part of the museum’s new exhibit, Wagons and Woodies: From Depot Hack to Station Wagon, which opens on Saturday, May 18.

If Mr. Smartt and Mr. Zaluski end up needing a station wagon to cart around all of those DVDs they plan to sell, Mr. Zaluski said he wouldn’t mind getting his hands on a 1959 Mercury Colony Park. With station wagons becoming more difficult to find in decent condition, he had better hurry up. Yesterday’s throwaway used car is fast becoming a collector’s treasure.