The thing I don’t like about liftbacks is that they pretty much killed off the tailgate in SUVs. I loved the tailgate on my old 4Runner, it was great to sit on and have lunch or just enjoy the scenery. It had a power window that was very nice for added ventilation when sleeping in the back. The liftback on the newer models provides a little shelter from the rain–I guess that’s a plus,but I’d take a tailgate any day.
I meant to elaborate on this. When I bought my Insight, it was one of the few times in my life when I was an early adopter. There were no Priuses around when I bought it. So, mostly people were always curious about it when they saw it – like the guy I met in the Bay Area who would not believe I could drive from L.A. to Vallejo on one tank of gas (and still have nearly a quarter of a tank left).
I guess my 91 Mustang GT would qualify as a liftback. Only big disadvantage was the back window was large and all the sunlight heated up the interior a lot. I got some metal louvers for the back window and had them painted the same color as the car, it looked pretty good.
I have a 2001 red Insight (it’s a 2-seater, with the back wheels half-hidden by aerodynamic panels). My kids were making fun of how cartoony it looked, and I said “I love that, at the turn of the century, this is what they thought the future would look like.”
I think it’s cute… and the whole back half gets lifted! Makes a roof bike rack a challenge…
Oh, it sits in front of my house on a lane that dead ends at a beach. We get a lot of foot traffic, and I get a lot of younger folks walking around it looking confused…
I would have sneered at it in derision back in 2001. In fact, I’m pretty sure I did. But now I appreciate its novelty. Is that an image of your actual car? It seems like it’s in excellent condition.
Mine was blue, but it was a 2001, too. I liked its looks, but it certainly drew a lot of attention. I’d forgotten about the panels. The first guy who had to change a tire for me didn’t know what to do!
I actually hadn’t heard the term “liftback” before opening this thread, but looking at the posts and Wikipedia it’s clear I grew up with one in the late 80s in South Africa (the Ford Sierra). The picture of the two Opels at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liftback#Europe is illuminating. It’s basically a sedan with the trunk door cut larger to include the back window. So no change in profile (i.e. a more vertical back) that you’d associate with a hatchback or sedan. But apart from the shape it does seem functionally equivalent to a hatchback in that it’s an open cargo compartment shared with passenger space.
Despite living in the US I probably have more of a European sensibility about cars. I dislike SUVs or anything higher up from the ground that feels bulky. A station wagon is my sweet spot in terms of carrying functionality and pleasantness to drive. And I kind of think of hatchbacks as smaller station wagons, purchased because you wanted a smaller or cheaper car. That’s probably not the majority view around here.
Station wagons are hard to find in the US. I have a 10 year old Acura TSX wagon (which they stopped making years ago) that I’m very happy with but if I upgraded I’m guessing I’d have to look at something expensive like an Audi or BMW.
Subaru still sells the Outback wagon here in the U.S., but otherwise, I think that all of the domestic automakers have dropped them in favor of crossovers and SUVs, and I don’t know if the non-luxury imports even ofter many wagons anymore.
This post made me go check just what station wagons are still available here. Until recently you could get a VW Golf SportWagen, but VW stopped selling them in the US in 2019.
Volvo still sells the V60 here as far as I can tell. Volvos aren’t exactly cheap either, but they aren’t quite as expensive as Audi or BMW.
I just found this MotorTrend article, listing all of the station wagons being sold in the US for the 2021 model year. Alas, it’s one of those annoying “click for each picture” types of articles, but what it lists:
- Audi RS6 Avant
- Audi A6 Allroad
- Mercedes-AMG E63 S Wagon
- Mercedes Benz E450 All-Terrain
- Mini Clubman
- Porsche Panamera Sport Turismo Turbo S / Turbo S E-Hybrid
- Subaru Outback
- Volvo V90, V90 Cross Country
- Volvo V60, V60 Cross Country, V60 Recharge
Of those, the Mini and the Outback are the only ones under $40K; the Audi A6 and the Volvo V60 are the next most affordable.
(Not aimed at you @kenobi_65)
I don’t really understand the difference between some crossovers, CUVs, and station wagons. Lots of CUVs and crossovers are what I would call a hatchback or station wagon.
I mean, why is the Subaru Outback a station wagon
https://www.subaru.com/content/dam/subaru/vehicles/2022/OBK/vsp/exterior-360/UAT/UAT_000.jpg.transform/x530/image.jpg
but the Subaru Crosstrek is not?
https://www.subaru.com/content/dam/subaru/vehicles/2021/CTK/vsp/exterior-360/UCG/UCG_000.jpg.transform/x530/image.jpg
The Crosstrek is smaller, but I still think it’s a wagon.
I do totally understand the idea of calling the any number of vehicles an SUV or crossover instead of a minivan, because of the stigma associated with “minivan”, even though they fulfill the same vehicle niche (Tesla X, for example), and often share a platform (Honda Pilot/Odyssey).
I’ve just always assumed the same avoidance is happening with “station wagon,” so people buy crossovers or CUVs that are just station wagons with maybe a suspension lift or high roof.
I strongly suspect that this is exactly it. Station wagons have fallen out of favor in the US, and “crossovers” are, as you note, pretty much just taller station wagons.
I would not be surprised if the reason that the Outback is still classified as a station wagon is that the model has 25+ years of heritage of being marketed as a “sport utility wagon” (and was originally a sported-up version of the Legacy wagon), and it’s likely still Subaru’s best-known model.
It’s enough smaller that i would call it a hatchback.
But all these categories are squishy.
I bought the Subaru Forester, which is considered a crossover, i think, or maybe an SUV. It has similar capacity to the Outback, but it was cheaper, and is shorter nose-to-tail, with a tighter turning radius. So it’s much easier to park in the city.
Oh I am virtually sure of that being the case – and in a self-reinforcing loop, that led makers to simply stop making the conventional station-wagon profile versions and now go directly to the lifted, high-riding version.
And when it was introduced that probably also served as a selling point to the demographic that buys Subarus, contrasting it with other makers that (back in the time) made you choose between boring wagon/minivan and clunky top-heavy conventional SUV. Turns out that even when they did introduce a proper CUV (Forester) the Outback remained popular so they read that market well.
I feel so unheard. 
A CUV is really a more practical car than a traditional station wagon, even if they are ugly.
I didn’t like buying a minivan, either, but that car turned out to be incredibly useful. I don’t need that much space any more, so CUV it is.
The early Celica absolutely looks like a miniaturized Mustang fastback. The line similarity is uncanny. Datsun and later Nissan’s take on the hot fastback, on the other hand, seems to have been more European-influenced, taking some styling cues from both Porsche and Jaguar.
After the war Nissan (Datsun) started out building Austins under license. By the 1960s they were designing their own cars, but the Austin influence is quite obvious and most Datsuns from that era really look like British cars. In the 240Z, I see a lot of styling cues from the British and Italian sports cars of the time.
At the end of the day, these are all squishy definitions with roots more in marketing than anything practical. In this specific case, the Outback used to be (well, still is) a Legacy with a factory lift kit and some plastic body cladding. You could get the Outback in sedan or wagon body styles, just as you could get the Legacy in a sedan or wagon. It had a different name but to everyone in the know it was basically just a trim package on the Legacy, and since the Legacy was a sedan or a wagon, so too was the Outback.
The Outback sedan wasn’t a sales success and the Legacy wagon was simply cannibalizing sales of its more lucrative Outback sibling, leading to the situation we have now, where the Legacy is only a sedan and the Outback is only a wagon. But it’s hard to overcome that history of people thinking of it as a wagon.
The Crosstrek, on the other hand, despite being nothing more than an “Outback” version of the Impreza, is at least its own car with its own sheet metal, introduced as a crossover from the beginning. So there’s no momentum to overcome in calling it a crossover.
There’s also the A4 Allroad, which may be what you meant given the “affordable” comment 
I did drive a Q3 rental when we visited New Mexico and liked it a lot more than I thought I would given it was an SUV. But if I wasn’t so frugal and happy to drive an older car I’d seriously look at the A4 wagon.
If you can find one used…