I continue to bemoan the fact station wagons got a bad rap. They clearly represent the most flexible and useful configuration you can get in a sedan-sized footprint, and so I'm sorry automakers have to disguise their designs to deliver that utility without calling their cars wagons. Consider the Honda Insight. Everybody talks about its hybrid powertrain but look at the cargo area covered by the rear hatch. Especially with the rear seatbacks flipped down flat, the space is cavernous. Though the Insight is a compact car, it can accommodate surprisingly voluminous loads. Which is precisely the genius of the station wagon roofline. And the Insight even presses that boundary. Take out just a couple degrees of down angle in the roofline's profile and you'd have a station wagon shape, pure and simple. And why not, I say? There's already a vertical glass element in the hatch. Too bad we can't just be honest and have the Insight be a really efficient little wagon. It IS plenty efficient, too,
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2010 Honda Insight EX: A Wagon by Any Other Name