The Government Wants Station Wagons To Come Back

The return of the American station wagon has become an unexpected talking point after the Trump administration announced plans to unwind federal fuel-economy rules.

Speaking on CNBC, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy suggested the proposed rollback could bring back body styles long pushed out of the market by tighter efficiency standards. “This rule will actually allow you to bring back the 1970s station wagon — maybe a little wood paneling on the side.”

He argued that reducing the fuel-economy targets would expand consumer choice after decades of regulation-driven product planning.

That sentiment appears directly in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s proposal, which claims prior fuel-economy rules reshaped the market in ways regulators never intended, “such as by almost eliminating the production of station wagons.”

The last full-size wagons from Detroit disappeared in the mid-1990s, while smaller domestic wagons survived another decade before quietly being dropped around 2008. Under federal rules, wagons are classified as passenger cars — unlike minivans and crossovers, which meet looser light-truck standards.

The agency’s new proposal would significantly reduce fuel-economy requirements across 2022–2031 model years, lowering the projected fleet average to 34.5 mpg by 2031. The current trajectory, set under the previous administration, targeted 50.4 mpg. NHTSA says the relaxed rules could reduce up-front vehicle costs by roughly $930 per vehicle, but it would also result in U.S. drivers consuming an additional 100 billion gallons of fuel through 2050.

That increase would cost households up to $185 billion collectively and raise carbon emissions by about 5 percent— despite transportation already being the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gases.

The proposal follows another major change earlier this year, when President Trump signed legislation eliminating fuel-economy penalties for automakers. According to NHTSA, that reversal means manufacturers face no fines dating back to the 2022 model year.

Whether any automaker sees a path to a profitable wagon revival under the updated standards remains an open question. Even so, the administration’s rhetoric shows how policy debates over efficiency can still echo through the shapes and segments that populate American showrooms.

This article was co-written using AI and was then heavily edited and optimized by our editorial team.

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