USED CARS - Station Wagons Reviews

The following report was originally published on ConsumerSearch to cover new cars manufactured and sold in the 2007 model year, and so can offer a good guide as to which cars from past model years are good bets as used vehicles. We are keeping this report on our site as a convenience to our readers who may be shopping for a used car.

Station wagons are gradually losing market share to other types of cars -- squeezed out by smaller SUVs and new hatchbacks as well as minivans. But station wagons still fill a niche for those looking for economical family transport. Station wagons have more cargo space than a hatchback, and they usually get better gas mileage than an SUV or minivan. If you need to carry more than five passengers, a minivan or SUV is a better choice, since these can have seating for up to seven. See our companion ConsumerSearch reports on minivans and SUVs .

Edmunds.com is one of the few publications still covering station wagons as a category, and reviews here are detailed and comparative. Consumer Reports also devotes separate page space to wagons. We especially like the reviews at Consumer Reports for their focus on longer-term reliability and owner satisfaction. In addition, we found a nice buyer's guide with both testing and recommendations at the online home of Kelley Blue Book (KBB.com). IntelliChoice.com chooses two wagons for its annual "Best Overall Value of the Year" awards, and we found good criticism at CarCritic.com. Other auto magazines like Car and Driver and Motor Trend haven't covered station wagons in a number of years, focusing coverage instead on other family cars and hatchbacks.

For 2007, a couple of wagons that receive otherwise good writeups have received some mixed reviews for overall reliability. The Volkswagen Passat wagon (*est. $24,370 to $33,320) is the most notable example. This wagon version of the Passat is listed as one of the top wagons at Kelley Blue Book, where editors say it has the nicest interior in its price range and is "stable, predictable, and confident at high speeds." But KBB.com doesn't really cover long-term reliability or cost-of-ownership issues. In an editorial at Motorists.org, Irene Haskvitz adds that the Passat's interior belies the price tag and that the Passat has an elegant ride.

Recently, it has become more difficult to define what is considered a station wagon and what is considered a crossover SUV or hatchback. Crossovers have the looks of a small SUV, but instead of being based on a truck platform, they are based on a car platform with unitbody construction. Crossovers sit higher off the ground than a standard station wagon and usually have a more commodious passenger area, with a rear liftgate to access storage space. We cover crossovers in our report on SUVs . Some hatchbacks also fit into the station wagon class. New models like the Honda Fit are sometimes referenced as a hatchback and sometimes as a wagon. Both types of cars have a rear hatchback, but station wagons are usually longer, with a larger cargo area and higher roofline. In general, a station wagon will have a more comfortable back seat than a hatchback. Hatchbacks are covered in our report on economy cars .  ... Continued