Station wagon choices

Was sort of afraid of that. Oh well, guess I am stuck with the Mazda for a while. Fun car to drive and very economical but the short roof is a pain. Just ordered a T-bar rack (the kind people use with pickup trucks) that will mount into my Class 2 hitch to extend the rear support a bit.

I am pleased with my 2014 Subaru Impreza. Bought it because of it’s low roof, and all wheel drive. I mounted a yakima rack, and can get two 17’ sea kayaks on top with the 48" crossbars. I like the all wheel drive, and avg 30 mpg overall. Much of the time I have a kayak or canoe on top. We also have a 2013 Ford Edge all wheel drive which has been excellent and trouble free, but it is high enough that I like to have help loading boats.

My son had a VW and he had numerous problems over time with it.

Hey Andy, you might want to go to the library and look at a new car buyer’s guide because it shows the expected 5 year depreciation for all new vehicles which gives you some idea of reliability and problems. My sister in law has a VW Alltrack and loves it and I’ve been in it and it’s very nice and for sure it looks like a great vehicle for carrying boats. I warned about VW quality but I think it is improving over time and one consideration is that they now offer a 10 year warranty. I’ll also mention that if you considering something at a Volvo price point you might want to look at an Audi Allroad too since it is an exceptionally nice vehicle. Finally, I used to work in automotive engineering and I have 2 friends that now work at GM and both have worked at other manufacturers and both of these guys are impressed with GM’s focus on engineering so that Buick may well be worth looking at if it appeals to you.

I have had one for several years and it is still in good state.

I would not in good conscience recommend any Audi product to anyone. I have never known anyone who owned one who did not have massive mechanical and electrical problems with them.

I wish Volvo would go back to making rugged, low- and long-roofed squared off wagons. Those were by far the best vehicles I ever had for hauling touring kayaks and canoes.

In the '70s and '80s Audis were absolute crap. I heard of one couple having one ‘stolen’ and set on fire so they could collect the insurance on that lemon. Somehow they managed to stay in business. Maybe they’ve improved.

I test drove a Jetta wagon back in 2010 and really liked it. Couldn’t bring myself to risk the pain and misery of owning another VW product, though. Bought the Hyundai ET and loved it.

https://money.cnn.com/gallery/autos/2015/10/20/consumer-reports-most-reliable-brands/3.html

I had a Hyundai Santa Fe for a while and it really was a nice car, especially for the price. A friend of ours who has a car repair garage had actually been so impressed by his customers’ Hyundais that he sold off all his family vehicles and replaced them with the brand.

Like the Mazdas, the Hyundais have a more solid feel and (at least in my opinion) have nicer finishes and better creature comfort than the similar Subarus, Toyotas, Nissans, VW’s and Hondas. And the Hyundais tend to be much cheaper on the used market.

The only reason I got rid of mine was that I had bought it used and the prior owner had not maintained the body and understructure well (we are in road salt country and consistently flushing off the underside during the winter is a necessity.) It was starting to get major rust. But it was second only to my '95 Volvo 850 in comfort for long highway drives.

Volvo wagons are the best…with the roof rails. Add Yakima crossbars and you can carry anything. I have hauled 20 and 17 1/2 foot wooden canoes (together) at highway speeds. The reach to the top is just right so loading and unloading is very easy. The Vvos have great roof structure so there are not load bearing issues that you will encounter with Japanese makes.
Naked roofs give you the option to roll your own, but even the best systems do not mount well on a naked roof…they slip, slide, shift, need constant fussing and they ruin the roof…why bother with that? Since 04 the Audis have been great vehicles…this is the best fallback to a Volvo and if proper AWD is something you need, the Audi Quattro is fabulous. Subaru’s AWD is an equally good system, just tied to wretched noisy motors with awful shifters.

I think the appeal of a car with a naked roof is that, for a person who likes this option, they can choose their own mounts and bolt them on. That’s why slipping and sliding isn’t part of the equation. One of these days I’ll be doing that with my '87 Suburban. The only hitch is that I would have to design a rack for which the mounts sit very low and for which the cross bars attach and detach with extreme convenience (I can design and build both, but it’s a requirement that makes things more complicated), because the doorway to my ancient garage isn’t tall enough to let that car in and out with a roof rack installed.

At present the V60 seems to check my boxes of used wagon with low, fairly flat roof line and sturdy in-built fore and aft rails for installing cross bars at sufficient and variable distances apart. Advertised fuel economy seems OK, but I always experience better due to stodgy habits. Am chatting up the local Volvo owners for reliable repair shops close by. I had a 1988 240 wagon that consumed too much parts and labor at local dealer shop.

For what it is worth: My daughter has been looking for months for a new yak hauling car to replace her CRV and just about gave up, since every one she looked at had those stupid rear spoilers that prevented lifting the tail gate with a yak on the roof or those idiotic front to back factory racks.
She called yesterday to say she found a 2019 Subaru Forester “basic” model with no rack and no spoiler on the rear roof.
It has the knock outs on the roof for attaching her Yakima “landing pads”

My 2014 has the exact same set up and we have been very happy with it.

I have been able to move my racks from one car to another with the exact same set up.

I still think the best kayak hauler is a proper trailer. They last for ever if you take care of them and they are a snap to load and unload. The right kind can also do a lot more than just haul kayaks. You also don’t have to worry about having the boats blow off the trailer, or forget the boat, or racks are on top and drive under something low.

@JackL Curious, as long as you aren’t talking about an automatic rear hatch, why do you find that the spoilers make it impossible to lift the hatch with kayaks on the roof? I have been lifting a rear hatch with some amount of spoiler with kayaks on the roof thru two Taurus/Sable wagons, one Subaru pre 2010 Outback and two Toyota Rav4’s. I have to control it so it rests gently against the hulls rather than banging it up fast, but I have never had any problem doing so. I usually load the way-back first when leaving because it makes it easier to double check that I got everything. But I pretty much always empty out the gear from there first coming home, with the boat still on the roof. I often don’t bother to drop the boat until the next morning, just get the wet gear pulled out to start drying overnight.

I agree that the spoilers are a pain on most models. The one on my Mazda CX5 completely prevents opening the rear hatch more than about 4 inches when boats are on the rack (a Thule attached to the useless lengthwise factory bars.)

While we are bitching, why do the car makers think that lengthwise bars are useful for ANYTHING???

@willowleaf said:
I agree that the spoilers are a pain on most models. The one on my Mazda CX5 completely prevents opening the rear hatch more than about 4 inches when boats are on the rack (a Thule attached to the useless lengthwise factory bars.)

While we are bitching, why do the car makers think that lengthwise bars are useful for ANYTHING???

I like the lengthwise bars on my 1999 Mercedes E320 4Matic wagon. I appreciate being able to easily adjust the spacing between the load bars. It also is something to grab onto when climbing onto the rear tire to reach something or wipe down the boat after loading it on the car.

I don’t like the fact that a boat on top, especially a canoe, greatly reduces how far I can open the hatch - and my car doesn’t even have a rear spoiler.

As far as the lengthwise bars go, I have found that it made it a bit easier to swap a set of rails between cars than with towers mounted into the roof. When we got a newer year Taurus or Sable we had to get new towers. When I went from my Subaru with lengthwise rails to a Toyota with lengthwise rails, the whole thing came right over. No new equipment needed.

You can argue about the sturdiness of these bars and people here will. But in my experience it has made for easier transferability of a rack system to a new car than did towers mounted into the roof.

I am scratching my head about how some of the models mentioned above can have such a dramatically different effect on lift gate clearance with boats on the roof than than the three different (Taurus and Sable were really the same critter) vehicle makes and models I have lived with over about 25 years. Granted at 5’3.5" I don’t have to duck quite as far as taller people would in the face of any limitation. The Ford/Mercuries were lower cars and I my husband had to duck a bit at 6’1". But I never heard any complaints about it, it was enough room to work with…

I did just take a look at pictures of the Mazda CX5. The one thing I see is a far more raked and less vertical fall from the end of the roof to the base of the tail gate than I had on either the pre-2010 Outback or the Rav4’s. I am wondering if the more curved and elongated shape of that lift gate is producing a distinctly different result when it is lifted under boats on the roof than in the cars I have dealt with. My aesthetic has always for a box on wheels, and maybe that is why I have not experienced the troubles above. And that is with the spoilers getting bigger with every car change.

The one complaint I have about the most recent spoiler is that is is on the bleeding edge of my having to get a roller loader for the “guest boat” side with bigger diameter wheels. It is still working with my unit with the original size wheels, but just.

@willowleaf said:
I agree that the spoilers are a pain on most models. The one on my Mazda CX5 completely prevents opening the rear hatch more than about 4 inches when boats are on the rack (a Thule attached to the useless lengthwise factory bars.)

While we are bitching, why do the car makers think that lengthwise bars are useful for ANYTHING???

You put it in a nut shell on the front to back racks.
I would never own a vehicle with them, and all they do is cause a cross rack to be higher

I truly miss the days of boxy vehicles, like my 1988 Dodge minivan and my 1992 Volvo wagon, that had steel roof gutters that I could clip $20 per pair “Quik’n’Easy” brackets onto with home-made pipe or 2 x 4 wood crossbars.

Yeah, the CX5, while fun and economical to drive, has that wind-tunnel “egg” shape which means a VERY short space betwixt the crossbars. I also carry my kayaks downside-up which makes opening the tailgate even more problematic.

I just picked up a hitch-reciever mounted adjustable height vertical “T” bar to see if I can get a little more horizontal support under the boats. Of course, that will make opening the tailgate completely impossible. Raining too hard today to try to mount it. Here’s a pic of the current arrangement: