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Archive for the ‘station wagon’ Category

If sporty rear-wheel drive wagons are your thing then you will love the all-new 2020 BMW 3-Series Touring that was just revealed. It’s essentially the same proposition as the sedan, but with extra carrying capacity and practicality – two characteristics that make it more appealing to families and those who go on frequent road trips.

Some will just buy the wagon over the sedan simply for the look – throughout Western Europe you see various generations of 3-Series Touring pass you on the motorway, so that part of the world’s love affair with the more practical end of the 3-Series range is well known. But, this new one still needs to show improvements over older generations in order to stay relevant, and BMW says it is packed full of cool features that will be irresistible for those who like both sporty rear-wheel drive cars and practical load-luggers and want these two characteristics in one car.

The Audi A6 Allroad Quattro is the perfect example of a sleeper success. The wagon has never been promoted as fiercely as its siblings, yet, it has been slowly and consistently ticking the sales clock for 20 years now. Yes, two decades! The Audi A6 Allroad Quattro made its debut in 1999 and was essentially the offroad version of the company’s station wagon. 20 years later, the fourth generation of the A6 Allroad Quattro is being launched, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

The Audi A6 Allroad Quattro is the perfect example of a sleeper success. The wagon has never been promoted as fiercely as its siblings, yet, it has been slowly and consistently ticking the sales clock for 20 years now. Yes, two decades! The Audi A6 Allroad Quattro made its debut in 1999 and was essentially the offroad version of the company’s station wagon. 20 years later, the fourth generation of the A6 Allroad Quattro is being launched, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Audi promised a significant redesign of the A4 and, like clockwork, that promise finally materialized with the debut of the 2020 A4. The German automaker didn’t just stop with the new A4, either. The entire family of models attached to the luxury sedan also arrived, including the S4 Avant, the high-performance wagon that has remained a forbidden fruit for customers in the U.S. Just like the A4, the S4 Avant is arriving in style. It still traces its roots to the current B9 generation of the A4 that dates back to 2016, but you wouldn’t know it once you get a good look at it. Most of the changes are cosmetic, though there are also a handful of technological updates that gives the punchy wagon an all-new model vibe. Unless Audi has a change of heart, it doesn’t look like we’ll get to see the updated S4 Avant in the U.S. anytime soon. Years have passed, and the S4 Avant is still out of their reach.

The days when station wagons were a thing in the United States are long gone. Not only do U.S. carmakers refuse to make wagons, but European and Japanese companies stopped bringing almost all of their long-roofed vehicles to North America too. With more and more buyers opting for crossovers instead, station wagon offerings have been reduced to a handful of offerings. And, it’s a shame, because U.S. buyers are missing out on a significant amount of cool stations wagons.

Hot hatch lovers that need more practicality than what a hatchback can offer now have one more excellent car to choose – the brand new 2019 Ford Focus ST wagon, based on the fourth-generation Focus. The new Focus ST wagon retains the sporty driving edge of the ST hatch but injects extra practicality for those who need it. Some may even say it’s cooler than the ST hatch since hot wagons always seem to have a glowing halo around them that just makes people go crazy.

Hot hatch lovers that need more practicality than what a hatchback can offer now have one more excellent car to choose – the brand new 2019 Ford Focus ST wagon, based on the fourth-generation Focus. The new Focus ST wagon retains the sporty driving edge of the ST hatch but injects extra practicality for those who need it. Some may even say it’s cooler than the ST hatch since hot wagons always seem to have a glowing halo around them that just makes people go crazy.

There’s a company based in Japan known as Arrows, and it will turn your Mercedes-Benz W124 estate into a stylish wagon ready to gulp down miles on scenic country roads.

Produced since 1994, the S6 is Audi’s go-faster version of the A6, slotting in under the even-faster RS6 variants. Previously offered as the fourth-generation C7, Audi just unveiled the latest fifth-gen S6, following up on the fifth-gen A6 that debuted at the 2018 Geneva International Motor Show. Once again offered in a long-roof Avant wagon body style, the latest S6 comes with fresh and sporty styling, oodles of comfort in the cabin, and a new mild-hybrid diesel powertrain under the hood. Read on for everything else this performance wagon is bringing to the table (beyond the groceries, obviously).

The new Audi RS6 Avant has been spotted covered in partial camouflage while making the test rounds recently. The high-performance wagon model of the A6 sedan is the latest Audi model to be captured by spy photographers. If anything, this shows that Audi’s test drivers have had their work cut out of them. The sporty station wagon was even spotted alongside the RS Q8 SUV.

Update 03/27/2019: We’ve received some new spy shots of the 2020 Audi RS6, This time in full production form. Check out the latest in our ”Spy Shots” section below.

At a time when wagons are slowly evolving from being family haulers to performance beasts, people in the U.S. are missing out on a lot of action. The Audi RS4 and the RS6 Avant give us the major #FOMO feels. Audi has told wagon-lovers in the U.S. not to give up hopes yet, as the company said, “We always look at potential new opportunities in the market. It’s a niche to explore. We keep holding discussions. Keep writing us letters.” That’s not a confirmation in any way, but it sounds like an assurance for the time being. The namesake fast wagon from the German automaker’s stable that we have here is the Audi A4 Allroad. Although we were mighty impressed with the wagon, it is no substitute for the RS4 Avant, and, that is why we need the Lord of the four rings to ship those beauties our way as soon as possible. You listening, Audi?

Update 06/04/2019: The Audi RS4 was caught testing on public roads and is nearly production ready. Check out our latest shots in the spy shots section below!

There’s no denying that Tesla has come a long way since it threw a battery pack and a badge on a Lotus and called in the Tesla Roadster. The brand now has four models in its range with a pickup truck and a semi on the way, potential range has nearly doubled compared to the original roadster, and Tesla is on the horizon of finding some pretty stiff competition in a segment it once had a dominating stronghold on. A decade after the original Roadster debuted, Elon Musk presented us with what is, essentially, the second-gen Roadster. This time around, however, it holds the title of being Tesla’s most aggressive-looking model and even delivers supercar-like performance with the caveat that it also comes with a supercar-like price in its best form. So, while the original Tesla Roadster has broken the record by traveling more than any other car in human history (Elon Musk’s roadster that was sent into space), the new roadster is breaking its own records. Even with figures like 7,376 pound-feet of torque, 620 miles per charge, or 0-to-60 mph in 1.9 seconds, we’re never truly happy and always want more. And, that’s exactly why this rendering of the Tesla Roadster as a shooting brake as tickled our interest in a way that few renderings ever do. It’s a forbidden fruit and ever seeing one is a long shot, but that doesn’t mean we can’t dream, right?

Bentley’s first SUV just became more powerful and faster although you won’t notice it that quickly when you look at the exterior of the new Bentayga Speed. Underneath the pretty bronze exterior, there’s a 626 horsepower 6.0-liter, twin-turbocharged, W-12 behemoth that helps the not-so-pretty beast reach 190 mph and a bit. That bit is one 1 km/h more than the Urus and this allows Bentley to take home all the bragging rights for now.

We are well accustomed to automakers goosing it out over who makes the fastest supercar but we’re now seeing this trend awkwardly trickle down to big SUVs. Porsche’s Cayenne Turbo was, arguably, the first modern SUV that packed a decent punch but many have followed in its wake with Lamborghini dropping the first Super-SUV ever (as they call it) with the Urus. Let’s see if Lamborghini responds with a peppered-up Urus or not, considering both companies are under the VAG umbrella.

Less than a month after the company launched the facelifted version, Volkswagen is all set to launch the sporty variant of the Passat Estate at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show. The Passat Variant R-Line Edition comes with a lot of new goodies and will certainly induce the younger folks’ interest. The company has announced that the R-Line edition will be limited to just 2,000 units!

With almost 50 million units sold since it was first introduced in 1966, the Toyota Corolla is, without question, the best-selling car in the history of the auto industry. Even if the world is populated by Corollas, Toyota has found a way to continuously reinvent the model in ways that make it popular. It comes as no surprise then that we’re going to see another reinvented version of the Corolla called the Corolla Trek at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show. Based on the Touring Sports wagon body of Toyota’s best-selling model, the Corolla Trek is essentially a raised version of the wagon that’s not a lot different from the Volkswagen Golf Alltrack. The recent trend of automakers raising their wagons and hatchbacks in the name of giving them crossover-like appeal has now taken over Toyota. We’ll see what that’s about when the Toyota Corolla debuts in Geneva next month.

Wagons are the most practical vehicles one can buy today. They amalgamate the practicality of an SUV and the ride and handling of a sedan. Although they lacked the star-power and the glamorous looks until five years back, things have changed. A lot of mainstream automakers have started making these long vehicles look sexy. One such company that deserves credit for making a wagon look so desirable is Volvo. The Scandinavian company has gone a step ahead by mixing a crossover and a wagon into one beautiful product called the Volvo V60 Cross Country.

Estates have always been looked upon as family and luggage haulers. They were never meant to be attractive, fast, or adventurous. These vehicles were boring, but very practical. But with time, estates, aka wagons, started getting glamorous and confident, and lately, even luxurious. One classic example of the same is the Audi A4 Allroad. Other than the slight body roll and the long tail, it is a perfect blend of a sedan’s ride and handling and an SUVs practicality and off-roading capabilities.

Mercedes will inject some practicality into its all-new second-gen CLA with the load-lugging CLA shooting brake model. It’s not difficult to see that, with its tapered, swooping shape, it won’t be the most cavernous wagon on the market, but it will certainly offer more space inside than the sedan. It may also appeal to wagon and SUV fans that would otherwise have completely ignored the model.

However, this is not merely a rehash of the initial CLA estate’s formula, since this new one has quite a different shape to it. The front it inherited from the new CLA sedan, but the rear end looks quite different compared to that of the previous CLA wagon – it’s even sleeker and has a more steeply raked fastback-like rear screen.

Realistically few will buy the CLA wagon for its practicality, and most will just want one because it’s a cool, stylish wagon that drives well. Plus it carries the ultra-desirable Mercedes badge. It’s a head-turner too, as with any CLA (even the older one), it draws quite a lot of looks since it’s quite an unusual shape and quite nice to look at too.

Mercedes-Benz is already parading camouflaged prototypes of its upcoming CLA wagon, the second generation of the load-lugging four-door coupe that is based on the A-Class. This time the model is all the more unique since there is no bigger CLS shooting brake anymore, so buyers looking for this type of sporty looking wagon within the Mercedes range will have to settle for the new CLA.

Ford has unveiled the refreshed Mondeo at the 2019 Brussels Motor Show in Belgium. The Mondeo was looking stale for quite some time now and needed a refresh desperately. However, it did not come alone. It brought along the company’s first-ever hybrid wagon and, from our initial impressions, we would call this hybrid-wagon a masterstroke!