Today there are countless vehicles on the road that even twenty years ago would have been labeled station wagons. The politically correct term for this type of vehicle is now "cross over." The term station wagon has been banished from the current automotive vocabulary and is now as jurassic as a curb feeler.
The interesting thing about the the current crop of wagons, now called cross overs, is that they compromise some of a station wagons best qualities. For example, new vehicles like the Nissan Rogue and the Infiniti EX are higher off the ground than the cars they are based on (Nissan Sentra and the Infiniti G35) and thus they are less fuel efficient, more prone to roll due to a higher center of gravity, and require a tall person/ladder to reach the roof rack. The worst part of this is that companies making these products jacked them up so no one would confuse them with a station wagon. Further more, putting a car on stilts does not make it an off road vehicle and each car maker makes it clear that these vehicles are not designed for off road use. This is where the marketing comes in and never leaves. Car makers today seem to be paying more attention to the image than the product itself. The cross over is less capable than either a car or a truck and thus fails at both jobs.
