VW Vanagon is the ideal family vehicle for the 1980s

The definition of a wagon has had a lot of stretch, in the eyes of car-industry marketers, going back many decades. The Willys Jeep Station Wagon was more of an ammunition truck than the kind of machine we commonly consider to be a wagon— say, the cushy Plymouth Satellite wagon favored by the Brady Bunch— and straight-up industrial-strength delivery vans such as the Dodge A100 got the "station wagon" label.

The third generation of the Volkswagen Transporter van, built from 1979 through 2002 (including South African production), was called the Vanagon in North America and was supposed to be a van and a wagon. Here's a two-page-spread magazine advertisement introducing American car shoppers to the Vanagon, which loaded and unloaded like a van but drove like a wagon… a rear-engined, air-cooled, throttle-lift-oversteering wagon with 67 horsepower, that is. Actually, a Vanagon with a few modifications can be a competent road racer, we've learned.

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