Remembering a Suburban Icon
by Teddy Wayne
MARCH 15, 2011 TAGS:
When the Chinese owners of the Swedish carmaker Volvo announced that they would no longer sell station wagons in the United States, it triggered novelist and humorist Teddy Wayne to pen this “obituary” for the fabled seven-seater.
The Volvo mid-size station wagon, an enduring symbol of upper-middle-class postwar suburbanism, was discontinued last month in the United States. It was 58. The Volvo wagon is survived by overweening baby-boomer entitlement and an affinity for sport utility vehicles fueled by diminishing concerns about the environment, oil production, and the well-being of other cars on the road.
An ongoing memorial service will be held in the collective unconscious of countless children of privilege who romanticize their youths.
The wagon, with its boxy corners, sturdy rubberized console and ample backseat, was an unlikely sex symbol. It may not have had the matinee-idol looks of an Italian sports car, but it projected an aura of quiet Northern European confidence that made it catnip to middle-aged women, particularly those who owned multiple cats. Its popularity spurred a long run of cameos in feature films and television shows, usually to connote its driver’s identity as a risk-averse office drone suffocated by quiet desperation or a harried mother dropping her children off at school just before tragedy or infidelity strikes.
Born with the moniker of Duett in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1953, the Volvo station wagon refashioned its image over nearly six decades while remaining true to its core aesthetics and principles: a rectangular chassis that combined Scandinavian austerity with American “inside-the-box” conformity; a muted paint scheme so as not to stand out too much in the generic Levittowns of America; and an emphasis on safety as a hedge against key-party drunk driving.
As detailed in auto historian Charles Hedley’s book, Our Cars, Ourselves: A History of the Automobile as an Extension of Identity, From the Pathetic Yugo to the Overcompensating Porsche, the wagon made its biggest mark in the tony suburbs of the East and West Coasts, with occasional cross-country road trip forays into the heartland.
While various models appeared in America in the 1950’s and ‘60s, it wasn’t until the Volvo 145, introduced in 1967, that a beige Volvo wagon cruising a few miles per hour below the speed limit through maple-lined streets became a ubiquitous sight. Hedley’s book argues that the prevalence of the wagon in the ’70s and ’80s is due both to the enhanced quality of the make as well as lapsed hippies’ surrender to conspicuous consumption.
“I grew up in the backseat of my dad’s Volvo, and I’ve raised my kids in the backseat of mine,” David Stein, a 46-year-old bankruptcy lawyer from Jericho, Long Island, said while en route to his family’s vacation home in the Hamptons. Turning to his offspring, one of whom will be saved four years from now by the Volvo’s sturdy side-impact protection system in a reckless driving spree en route to Bonnaroo, Stein added “And if you don’t stop fighting right now, I’ll turn this car around.”
“The Volvo has become a classic signifier for the American nuclear family,” said Hedley. “I mean, you know, a well-off American family. But one that places an emphasis on education as opposed to merely money, though money is still a priority. They probably don’t really like each other much, when you get down to it, in part from all those long, agonizing family trips in the Volvo. So, yeah—a well-off, educated, not particularly close-knit American family. Oh, and white, obviously. Can’t believe I forgot that. Like the family on ‘Growing Pains.’”
The death of the Volvo wagon, experts predict, will create a cultural vacuum to be filled with the nostalgic detritus of other pastimes and memories associated with family. “What will bourgeois children of the ’80s cling to now?” Hedley asked. “Their fading memories of fear of nuclear annihilation after listening to a Reagan speech? Watching their parents play Jenga with their yuppie friends at a dinner party? Gathering around the TV to watch the old Betamax?”
“Come to think of it, I kind of miss ‘Growing Pains,’” he added.
Echoing Hedley’s concerns is David Stein’s wife, Jennifer Stein-Waldbaum, 43. “It won’t be the same without the Volvo wagon around,” said Mrs. Stein-Waldbaum, who met her husband at a University of Pennsylvania alumni mixer. “What vehicle will we turn to for reassurance that we are, in fact, a perfectly normal, functional, high-earning and-achieving family with no significant problems, such as, oh, I don’t know, closeted drinking or squelched dreams of painting in Paris to become a homemaker for three ungrateful lacrosse brats?”
Stein-Waldbaum paused to stare soundlessly into the rearview mirror at the receding highway while mouthing the words “perfectly normal.”
Noted her husband, “I swear I will turn this goddamn car around.”
Teddy Wayne is the author of the novel Kapitoil
The Volvo mid-size station wagon, an enduring symbol of upper-middle-class postwar suburbanism, was discontinued last month in the United States. It was 58. The Volvo wagon is survived by overweening baby-boomer entitlement and an affinity for sport utility vehicles fueled by diminishing concerns about the environment, oil production, and the well-being of other cars on the road.
An ongoing memorial service will be held in the collective unconscious of countless children of privilege who romanticize their youths.The wagon, with its boxy corners, sturdy rubberized console and ample backseat, was an unlikely sex symbol. It may not have had the matinee-idol looks of an Italian sports car, but it projected an aura of quiet Northern European confidence that made it catnip to middle-aged women, particularly those who owned multiple cats. Its popularity spurred a long run of cameos in feature films and television shows, usually to connote its driver’s identity as a risk-averse office drone suffocated by quiet desperation or a harried mother dropping her children off at school just before tragedy or infidelity strikes.
Born with the moniker of Duett in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1953, the Volvo station wagon refashioned its image over nearly six decades while remaining true to its core aesthetics and principles: a rectangular chassis that combined Scandinavian austerity with American “inside-the-box” conformity; a muted paint scheme so as not to stand out too much in the generic Levittowns of America; and an emphasis on safety as a hedge against key-party drunk driving.
As detailed in auto historian Charles Hedley’s book, Our Cars, Ourselves: A History of the Automobile as an Extension of Identity, From the Pathetic Yugo to the Overcompensating Porsche, the wagon made its biggest mark in the tony suburbs of the East and West Coasts, with occasional cross-country road trip forays into the heartland.
While various models appeared in America in the 1950’s and ‘60s, it wasn’t until the Volvo 145, introduced in 1967, that a beige Volvo wagon cruising a few miles per hour below the speed limit through maple-lined streets became a ubiquitous sight. Hedley’s book argues that the prevalence of the wagon in the ’70s and ’80s is due both to the enhanced quality of the make as well as lapsed hippies’ surrender to conspicuous consumption.
“I grew up in the backseat of my dad’s Volvo, and I’ve raised my kids in the backseat of mine,” David Stein, a 46-year-old bankruptcy lawyer from Jericho, Long Island, said while en route to his family’s vacation home in the Hamptons. Turning to his offspring, one of whom will be saved four years from now by the Volvo’s sturdy side-impact protection system in a reckless driving spree en route to Bonnaroo, Stein added “And if you don’t stop fighting right now, I’ll turn this car around.”“The Volvo has become a classic signifier for the American nuclear family,” said Hedley. “I mean, you know, a well-off American family. But one that places an emphasis on education as opposed to merely money, though money is still a priority. They probably don’t really like each other much, when you get down to it, in part from all those long, agonizing family trips in the Volvo. So, yeah—a well-off, educated, not particularly close-knit American family. Oh, and white, obviously. Can’t believe I forgot that. Like the family on ‘Growing Pains.’”
The death of the Volvo wagon, experts predict, will create a cultural vacuum to be filled with the nostalgic detritus of other pastimes and memories associated with family. “What will bourgeois children of the ’80s cling to now?” Hedley asked. “Their fading memories of fear of nuclear annihilation after listening to a Reagan speech? Watching their parents play Jenga with their yuppie friends at a dinner party? Gathering around the TV to watch the old Betamax?”
“Come to think of it, I kind of miss ‘Growing Pains,’” he added.
Echoing Hedley’s concerns is David Stein’s wife, Jennifer Stein-Waldbaum, 43. “It won’t be the same without the Volvo wagon around,” said Mrs. Stein-Waldbaum, who met her husband at a University of Pennsylvania alumni mixer. “What vehicle will we turn to for reassurance that we are, in fact, a perfectly normal, functional, high-earning and-achieving family with no significant problems, such as, oh, I don’t know, closeted drinking or squelched dreams of painting in Paris to become a homemaker for three ungrateful lacrosse brats?”
Stein-Waldbaum paused to stare soundlessly into the rearview mirror at the receding highway while mouthing the words “perfectly normal.”Noted her husband, “I swear I will turn this goddamn car around.”
Teddy Wayne is the author of the novel Kapitoil
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