The Boss Wagon is alive and well in a very unlikely way with the final Buick Roadmaster.
arrived more than a decade into an era of downsized cars with understated exteriors. It sported skirted fenders, woodgrain paneling, and three rows of seats. When the Roadmaster and its B- platform siblings appeared, almost all new cars were unibody designs. GM's full-size wagons for '91 were body-on-frame dinosaurs, with V-8 power and rear-wheel drive—the ideal template for a sleeper muscle car.
The Roadmaster launched as a formal, old-school family hauler. "I think people respected the wagon, although it was a period when wagons were on their way out," says Ed Welburn, who, before becoming head of General Motors global design, worked on GM's final rear-drive wagon. Early-'90s families were driving minivans and Ford Explorers. A station wagon was somewhat uncool, in both a school drop-off lane and a staging lane.
Schorr's builds were freaks at the time. But since then Welburn has seen the GM wagon transition into a modern hot-rod darling. "I noticed it a few years ago, the beginnings of it," he says. Some friends from Bulgari's collection recently visited him, arriving in two modified Roadmasters. "It's an interesting phenomenon," Welburn says. "It's hard for me to put 'performance' and that vehicle in the same sentence.
Not every modified wagon suits his taste. "Some look ridiculous," says Welburn, who prefers stock-looking sleepers with modestly upsized wheels for "a more balanced look." But he's open to all modes of vehicular enthusiasm. Boss Wagons ho!
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