WEST COAST WAGONS
Celebrating the heyday of the woodie
From the mountainous switchbacks and imposing redwood forests of Mendocino County to the bright blue waters and golden sands of the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve, California’s Highway 1 has epitomised America’s spirit of adventure for almost a century. Equally ingrained in West Coast beach culture is the humble woodie, a style of automobile born out of necessity that grew to become an unlikely cult classic, long after its star had begun to fade. And there’s no better place to celebrate three of the country’s finest timber-bodied station wagons than Newport Beach, a glittering jewel on the California coastline less than 20 miles from where Highway 1 draws to a close at Dana Point.
Stop at any state beach along the 656-mile length of Highway 1 and you’re as likely to see a woodie with a longboard strapped to the roof and a drinks cooler on the back seat as you are a Volkswagen camper, yet when woodies first came to the fore in the 1920s and ’30s they were built not for style but for practicality. Rather than being factory models, the lion’s share of early station wagons – modified saloons that earned their keep collecting passengers and luggage from the railway station or ferrying people around large estates – were instead constructed by independent coachbuilders. It was the cost of steel and the abundance of old coachbuilding techniques that led most to construct bespoke bodies from wood, and what began as simple ‘depot hacks’ with canvas flaps in place of windows – load-luggers built for hard graft – eventually became objects of desire.
Early woodies were rustic, purposeful affairs with rear compartments built of ash and poplar, and as technology evolved so too did their style. The advent of roll-down windows brought with it a more bulbous look with a wider rear to accommodate deeper channels in which to house the glass. As the woodie developed it began to make the transition from utilitarian workhorse to country club chic, with the high prices of the bespoke coachwork drawing a small but enthusiastic following among aspiring businesses and the upper-middle class. As time went on, mainstream manufacturers got in on the act, some outsourcing the construction of wooden bodies to specialist coachbuilders and others, such as Ford, carrying out all the work in-house. Whichever route was taken, the cost to both manufacturer and customer was invariably high, and none were produced in enormous numbers. Considering the high level of maintenance required – and the cost of not doing so – it’s no surprise that today woodies are some of the rarest cars on America’s roads.
Orange County’s Crevier Classic Cars is in many ways a port in a storm, with owner Donnie Crevier’s passion for woodies resulting in a fine collection of beautifully maintained and incredibly rare examples. The oldest in this three-car set is the ’38 Buick Century, and it’s perhaps the model that best encapsulates the firm’s post-great Depression bounceback, going from selling just 43,000 cars in 1933 to some 220,000 four years later. Much of its recovery was due to the sharp and rationalised line-up of cars introduced in 1936.
General Motors’ vice president of styling, Harley Earl, led the charge, bringing to market the streamlined A-bodied Special, B-bodied Roadmaster and Limited, and, the sweet spot in the range, the ‘Banker’s Hotrod’ Century, which mated the small A-body with the Roadmaster’s powerful straight-eight Dynaflash engine. All featured technological improvements, with the addition of powerful hydraulic brakes.
Showing his commitment to keeping the range fresh, Earl’s striking Art Deco designs were reworked for 1937. As well as benefiting from a longer wheelbase, which was now up to 126in, the Century and its stablemates were made lower, wider and longer, increasing passenger room – though at a significant weight increase. In order to compensate, the Century’s
‘Early cars were rustic, but as the woodie developed it made the transition from utilitarian workhorse to country club chic’