The Wagon of Cadillacs

The first regular-production wagon Cadillac has sold in the United States, the CTS Sport Wagon flaunts the division's rakish knife-edge styling.

FOR most of us, the classic American station wagon — with its acres of fake woodgrain siding, sticky vinyl bench seats and lazy-revving V-8 engine — is a fixture of our collective automotive consciousness. It is also extinct. The gas crises of the ’70s hobbled it, the minivans of the ’80s dealt a knockout blow and the S.U.V.’s that followed stomped on its grave.

Could the new Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon — the only American-brand station wagon now available in this country — be a green shoot that portends a revival of this American archetype?

Not a chance. Instead, this car’s inspiration comes from Europe.

On the Continent, station wagons never were the wallowing land arks we knew, so today’s European car buyers aren’t scarred by that memory. And with Europe’s sky-high gas prices and narrow streets, S.U.V.’s make even less sense there than they do here, so Europeans who are engaged in all those much-talked-about “active lifestyle” pursuits — or who just need to carry a lot of stuff — often drive station wagons.

They drive so many of them, in fact, that it’s not unusual for station wagons to outsell their sedan counterparts. That explains why European carmakers haven’t dropped the body style — their home market loves it. Thus, most of the wagons sold here are European makes: Volvo, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

Cadillac ardently wants to be thought of as a legitimate competitor to those makes, and it would also like to increase its tiny business in Europe. “For us, with aspirations in Europe, it made sense to do a wagon,” said Steve Shannon, the Cadillac marketing director. “It’s a relatively inexpensive vehicle to do once you have the sedan. And we think that over time there will be some European-ization of the U.S. market as vehicles get smaller, with smaller-displacement engines. A greater interest in wagons may also be a result.”