In recent years, many car brands – the premium German marques in particular – have successfully turned their styling flair up to the max when it comes to producing a great looking estate version of a sometimes-unremarkable saloon car. When the Avant, Touring or Sportbreak moniker is added to a more versatile five-door model with fold-down rear seats, for example, the car itself is invariably sleeker, more dynamic, and a more accomplished design.
Estates loaded with the kid’s paraphernalia, push bikes, space hoppers, Labrador dogs, ski gear, antiques, bags of recycling, garden waste and so on have long been a common sight on our roads. Disappointingly though, just when the style of estate cars has matured to such an advance and satisfying level, the market for traditional saloon-based wagons is declining, with SUVs and crossovers now stealing sales from these practical, versatile and stylish, load lugers.
Time was not too long ago that the estate derivatives of many popular saloon cars looked as if they had been designed and developed as afterthoughts, with poorly conceived and executed ‘box’ sections tacked on the back of the three-box saloon base, with seemingly little care or thought for aesthetics.
Today’s graceful ‘lifestyle’ estates, as created so well by Audi, Renault, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Mazda, and many others, are leagues ahead of the functional but frumpy station wagons of old, such as the boxy Morris Oxford ‘Farina’, Volvo 700-Series, Austin Allegro and Toyota Crown.
Eight especially unfortunate-looking estates from these less refined days, when function ruled over form, follow on here, with one or two personal choice that might just raise the odd eyebrow or 20!