Today I'm going to pick on Buick in order to ask a question.
The 1996 Buick Roadmaster Estate Wagon rode a version of the GM B-body fundamentally unaltered from the Carter administration. It achieved a combined fuel economy of 18 mpg with a 260-hp 5.7L V8 engine, acceleration from 0-60 in 7.8 seconds, 5000-lb towing capacity, and was extremely well-equipped at a 1996 price of $27,575. It's pretty overweight, at 4563 lb. This car was derided as "antiquated" and "obsolete" with accordingly lackluster sales, and was dropped, along with all full-size RWD GM cars, in 1996.
On a personal side note, these cars are somewhat special to me, particularly in their anachronistic simulated woodgrain side paneling. Antediluvian though the appearance may be, the noise made by their Corvette-derived LT1 engine still stirs the heart of any red-blooded American. The horn does not honk quite so much as sound a low shout of arrogant aggression. Some people may have bought the Roadmaster because they were not yet ready for a truck and they felt that V8, body-on-frame, and rear-wheel drive was the layout that God intended. But I imagine that the criteria for purchasing it were mostly practical for most buyers, just as they would be today. What family hauler does Buick currently offer in the modern age?
How is it that this pudgy crossover SUV can be lauded as modern when a car that came 15 years earlier was chided for being old-fashioned, though both cars achieved almost identical results in fuel economy, comfort, performance, towing capacity, passenger space, and price? Does the half-century-old storied Roadmaster nameplate and collectible-classic styling tend to work against the big wagon? Does the Enclave's SUV profile, with all the glitzy, cheesy style of a Walmart auto accessory aisle, do it favors that I cannot perceive?
If the 1960s United States could, on its own volition, visit the Moon with manned landings, on multiple occasions, why does the task of merely repeating that goal seem impossible, even if earnest support from the Russian and European space agencies were present?
Maybe the stigmatization of wagons was so complete that the big wagons passed unmourned in 1996. I am unable to comment with direct experience because I was not suitably advanced in age in 1996 to make note of car buyers' habits. But surely $4 gas snapped enough people out of the SUV craze that some major automakers put pen to paper on the next round of wagons, picking up where design stagnated in 1996?
No. For the same reason that in planning a return to the moon in 2020, we didn't recycle the Saturn V rocket. A rocket that never lost a payload or crew, which turned out to be the most reliable link in the whole Apollo program, is far too old-fashioned and unreliable to be used in the 21st century. The Constellation Program would have gotten us back to the Moon with a clean-sheet design, but it was scrapped in 2010 by the Obama administration.
If you are considering buying a truck or SUV, I do not fault you for your decision at all. You have demands for moving people and cargo that need to be fulfilled, and you can only buy what is for sale. Likewise, I do not fault NASA for failing to return to the Moon or create a manned Mars mission, either. They are making do with what is available. We have not given them a blank check since approximately 1966. But perhaps we could innocently ask our dealer why automakers make vehicles today that are no more advanced than 15 years ago, with more weight and bulkier styling.
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