For a subset of urbane, professional, country-house-owning, canine-loving, New York City homosexuals of a certain age, the contemporary upscale station wagon is extremely arousing—on par with, say, viewing Olympic men’s swimming. This is because these vehicles do everything our cohort requires. They can schlep a dog and two gentlemen to the mountains, lake, or beach in comfort and style. They are available (or come exclusively) with all-wheel drive, for added four-season security and not dying. Like the perfect pair of jeans, they can be dressed up for a gala event or dressed down so you won’t be singled out and murdered during a trip to rural Vermont. And they provide plenty of space for hauling charming and unexpected roadside finds, like a quartet of wooden Danish Modern dining-room chairs, a trio of patinated iron plant stands, or a pair of West Point cross-country runners who are lost and in need of a ride back to campus.
This attraction to wagons surprises other people—people who are not urbane, professional, country-house-owning, canine-loving, New York City homosexuals of a certain age. These people, who make up an overwhelming majority of the American population, believe that wagons are passé and frumpy. This is not that shocking. For the Boomers and Gen X–ers raised between 1949 and 1983 when the wagon was the suburban ideal, these cars seem like something that should be driven only by a brittle, middle-aged, chain-smoking matriarch, armed with a purse filled with Valium and divorce papers. And for the generation reared since then, when the minivan or S.U.V. was the maternal model, the wagon seems like an absurd anachronism, predating the rational era when mobile entertainment, adolescent isolation, and beverage holstering were our foremost travel needs. When we recently suggested to a New Jersey divorcée friend that she acquire a wagon as a family vehicle, she scowled and said, “I can just imagine dropping my sons at the Paramus Mall in that. I’d look like a sad, desperate crone.”
However, during a recent stint with the handsome, potent, capacious, Saddle-Brown-leather-lined, Mineral Grey Metallic–slathered, $56,000 2014 BMW 328i xDrive sports wagon pictured above, we wowed several members of the aforementioned velvet elite.
So what is it that makes this particular five door so very . . . everything? Maybe it’s the fact that while we gays love excess, we hate waste, and this wagon is the most efficiently packaged luxury carting option, wringing 33 miles out of a gallon of gas on the highway—or 45 (!) if you opt for the diesel model. Or perhaps it’s the way it out-Audis the Audi with its simple shape and pure un-inflected wagon-ness, out-Benzes the Mercedes with exquisite materials and a coddling (yet un-dowdy) cabin, downsizes from the largesse of the Caddy (we await hopefully the right-size ATS wagon), and beats the Volvo to market. Or maybe it’s just the sportiest among them and the most fun to drive.
This last bit may be a minority opinion. Many bitchy, know-it-all automotive writers—our closest friends in the business among them—have groused that the latest iteration of the BMW 3-Series, long the benchmark in the category of fun-to-drive four-doors known as sports sedans, has lost some of its handling primacy. They have lavished particular criticism on the new car’s slightly more subdued ride and steering feel, a moderate compromise BMW made with its typical enthusiast image in order to lure in more luxury buyers. In its stead, the critics have been heaping praise on the new, more “emotional” Lexus IS 350.
We have three responses to this criticism. First, given the needs and driving style of the vast majority of people—and we include in this designation the select cut of humans who have the privilege of being urbane, professional, country-house-owning, canine-loving, New York City homosexuals of a certain age—the steering and handling are more than plenty sporting. On the pulverized Manhattan pavement, sweeping exurban parkways, and whirling upstate twisties, this wagon, like all three versions of the new 3er we’ve tested since it was released, handled beyond appropriately for our tastes and certainly better than a competitive Mercedes or Audi. Second, when you add a cargo-covering hatch to the rear of a sports sedan to transform it into a sports wagon, some of the concern about it being sporty goes out the split-fold rear window. Somehow we don’t care as much (meaning, even less) about lap times at German’s famed Nürburgring racetrack when we’re hauling a cardboard box of English transferware, two reusable shopping bags filled with heirloom pears and artisanal scones, a bundle of firewood, and an adorable pit-bull-boxer mix. And finally, we are never, ever buying a Lexus IS 350. Have you seen that thing? It looks like a frilled shark that just slurped up some rancid chum. (Also, there’s no Lexus wagon.)
Contemporary station wagons account for less than one percent of American vehicle sales. And while our friends at BMW told us that buyers of their 328i xDrive sports wagon are the wealthiest (and, ahem, oldest) of all 3-Series buyers, unlike those greedy plutocrats who squat atop the global economy hoarding its resources, this is a one percent to which we find no shame in ascribing. Given that the gays are indubitable trendsetters—think about who invented disco, urban gentrification, gym worship, Lady Gaga, bitchiness, and gay marriage—in the next decade, you’ll likely be driving a wagon as well, so get used to it.
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