You have to make allowances for car lovers. We have our weird affections.
One consistent love is Volvo wagons. So many of us learned to drive in a classic boxy Swedish longroof with ladder-frame headrests that you can’t bring the subject up at a gathering unless you’re ready to hear long stories.
[Editor’s note — Sean, you, too? No. An early Explorer. But I’ve been around enough to know.]
But much of the automotive world has changed. Dodge doesn’t make V8-powered muscle cars anymore (though they’ll sell you one with an inline-6). Hummers are electric now. Jeep sells $120,000 vehicles. And Volvo? Volvo might stop making wagons.
The news comes from the U.K.’s Autocar, which interviewed Volvo CEO Jim Rowan.
When Autocar asked him if Volvo could abandon wagons soon, he answered, “Yeah, because I think it’s changed, right? SUVs have changed with ride height.”
The change could come because Volvo buyers have changed, Rowan said. “One of the things that changed over the years is the decision makers of buying a Volvo car over-indexes to women, because they like a higher ride height.”
The brand canceled its ordinary V90 wagon in 2021 but kept the high-riding Cross Country variant. It trimmed the V60 wagon’s lineup to just a Cross Country version and a high-performance Polestar Engineered model around the same time. Last month, the Polestar version was retired, too.
V60 Cross Country and V90 Cross Country models remain at dealerships for now.