8/30/2023 0 Comments Benz kompressor![]() ![]() Odds were if a buyer was already in a Mercedes dealership looking for a station wagon, they could afford the next biggest size segment. In light of this, the W202 C-Class wagon and the E36 3-Series Touring would probably have not been huge hits here, and Mercedes was more than happy to sell people into the W124 and W210 wagons of the time. Volvo was clearly the overall medalist for variety with its 740, 960, 850, and V40 wagons during the decade. VW offered the Passat wagon at the time, while Audi introduced the A4 Avant here by the middle of the decade, with both recording decent sales but were far from runaway hits. ![]() Peugeot withdrew from the US at the start of the decade after selling barely a thousand examples of the 405 station wagon, so that's hardly an endorsement of the premium, European station wagon segment at the time. By Jay Ramey Published: Autoweek The W202. What competitors would the W202 wagon have faced?Īmong European brands in the 1990s there was the Saab 9-5 wagon, while Volvo offered the small V40 stateside-a model shared with Mitsubishi and produced in the Netherlands. Street-Spotted: Mercedes-Benz C200 Kompressor The W202 wagon is finally importable starting this year, but this isn't quite one of them. On the other hand, were small but luxury-priced station wagons a hit in the US in the 1990s? The W203 wagon, which did make it here, recorded pretty modest sales, which is why Mercedes then made the decision to keep the 2008 W204-generation wagon out of the states, as well as the next two generations. If anything, Mercedes should have brought the W202 wagon here and kept the W203 wagon out as SUVs became more popular. On one hand the smallish station wagons were more popular in the 1990s than at any later time. That's a difficult question to answer even with 25 years of hindsight. Were Mercedes and BMW right to keep the C-Class and the 3-Series Touring out of the US in the 1990s? The automaker was also protective of its status as a seller of luxury cars in the US, which is why we didn't see any truly budget versions of its offerings here, including diesel versions of the C-Class sedan or the A-Class hatch that arrived in 1997. But Mercedes also kept most of its least expensive and smallest models out of the US, letting the E-Class serve as its sole wagon model for quite some time. When it came to station wagons, Mercedes certainly had a hit on its hands with the W123 and W124 generations, which battled Volvo 700 and 900 series wagons along with the E34 5-Series. Street-Spotted: Citroën Grand C4 Picasso. ![]()
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