No luggage space left inside with seven passengers already seated. That’s what the tailgate is for: load up the suitcases on it and secure them with a strap. That’s how it was done in the old days.
And yes, this is where the term “station wagon” comes from.
Sweet .
My parents had one of these before I was born, it was center punched when another driver ran a stop sign .
Simple and easy / cheap to maintain .
-Nate
Great ad – there is so much contemporary history drawn into it. The name – the “Advance-Design”, the placement of the font – wow! Geez, I love ephemeral art.
I think the term “station wagon” came years before the Suburban. Back to when they used horse drawn “wagons” to deliver and pick-up people from the train “station”.
The term was used back in the horse-drawn wagon days. Here’s an early 1900s ad for Studebaker station wagons.
I believe that after horse-drawn vehicles were replaced by cars, the term “station wagon” essentially went into disuse, similar to other terms of its days such as phaeton, victoria, surrey, etc. But some of these terms came back alive decades later, like station wagon.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that the term started with the Suburban. It’s just that it was being shown used in the way the term was originally coined back in the horse-drawn wagon era.
Don’t forget that “Suburban” was also just a generic term for this body style back then; it didn’t become a GM trademark until 1988, a decade after Plymouth Suburban wagons went out of production and nobody but GM still used the “Suburban” name so they could trademark it. Similar to how “jeep” was once a generic term before it became a Willys trademark, though in their case it was because nobody else called the vehicles they sold to civilians “Jeeps”. (I’m still curious as to why Kaiser still advertised them as ‘Jeep’ (with single quotes) into the late 1960s; I think only after AMC bought Jeep did the quotes finally disappear from Jeep ads.)
No room for luggage when all seats are filled with passengers has been a hallmark of the Suburban from the beginning, it seems. That was my experience with the ones as recently as 15 years ago.
I was going to say that the modern version had at least some room (though not enough for the 7-9 people the thing could carry) but then again there was probably gobs of room under the seats in these old ones.
I give Chevrolet/GMC a lot of credit for sticking with this body for decades before it found a significant market.
I remember looking at the Isuzu Trooper at a GM dealer and checking out a GMT400 Tahoe when that 4 door shorter wheelbase was newly introduced. The unit I looked at had barn doors, and I mentioned to the salesman that a tailgate seemed more useful. He told me that whichever version they had in stock, which was otherwise equipped as a customer might want, the customers always said they wanted the opposite and used that as an excuse to walk away.
Cool ad. Shows that GM is actually capable of sticking with a model/sub-model for more than 5-10 years if they really want to.
But I’d hate to be the people in the back of that thing with the tailgate lowered and filled with stuff. The exhaust fumes had to be brutal! And remember they didn’t burn as clean as today’s cars.
My thoughts exactly !
That thing needs a roof rack too.
I trust the front seat passengers were kind and thoughtful enough to crack their windows open a bit, to allow fresh air flow through, to prevent the exhaust fumes coming in, right? Nah, not likely. Uncle Pete in the front did not want to muss his hair.
He didn’t want to muss his hair or more likely didn’t want his hat to blow out the window! haha.
Ok, interesting vehicle but inquiring minds really want to know something more important. How did the last row of passengers get into that wagon? Climb through the back over the seat back or climb through the front over two rows of seats. None of them look like gymnasts.
If you take a closer look, you’ll see that there’s only two passengers in the middle seat. That’s because it was narrower, leaving something of an aisle for the rear seat passengers. The front passenger seat folded forward.
Yes, folks were generally more svelte and limber back then. Good luck picking up folks at the airport in this today and asking them to climb back there.
The front passenger seat was a clever thing, when you folded the back rest forward the lower cushion moved forward too, not much but enough to not get caught on the B pillar or latch striker .
Paul’s nice picture shows the abbreviated middle seat .
I logged a lot of miles in slightly newer Suburbans before seat belts and stuff they were fantastic child carriers ~ jamb 8 ~ 12 ill mannered brats in and head off into the woods or Canada etc……
-Nate
Other countries coined other names for their wagons British wagons were called Estates or shooting brakes aimed at the landed gentry or anybody wealthy enough to have the conversion from sedan or a coach built car constructed, the 50s saw the first factory built examples in some showrooms and by the 60s most makers had one on their books my 66 Suerminx is still based on sedan parts and I know where the seams are though it has wagon specific panels etc from the B pillar back,
GMH in OZ called their wagon a station sedan aimed at the rural community where a station is a large farm not somewhere trains stop.
My father’s 1958 Ford Country Sedan (wagon) had to be registered as a “Suburban” in New York State. The plates were marked as such. Had to pay extra for the tags too. Legal definition involved here. That’s New York, even then.
Later ones had luggage room behind the third row. This is from 1988. We had a 1999, last year for GMT400 Suburban. It had plenty of room back there.
The welded steel body was cheaper to build, than the passenger car based “woody” wagons. Why not tout it as added protection?
I owned a 51, Melba, for 12 years. This beast was 4800 lbs, 216 cu in 6 cylinder. I put a 3 speed overdrive free wheel transmission and open driveline in, 17 mpg up and down the west coast. Lived in it for 2 years as a hang gliding bum. I met a guy in SF who had a 427 in his.
Shoulda, woulda, coulda, sigh…