So four of you were in the back playing cards with no seatbelts? Those were the days!
Playing cards or jumping back and forth between the middle and back seats. I don't know which was worse. After the Country Squire we had a 66 Impala Station Wagon--white with the woodie exterior and a black interior. As Kilroy mentioned, the Chevy had a rear facing back seat and there was a gap area between the back of the middle seat and the back of the back seat. As the smaller kids in the family, we used to fight about who got to sit in that gap area!
In an accident you would have likely been cut in half sitting there but that was the best seat in the house because you were between the "big" kids in the middle seat and the "little" kids in the back seat! Interestingly, it was the exact same wagon used in the PBR promotion picture below. Not sure when PBR ran that promo--based on the CB radio reference I am going to guess the mid 70's!
The 1971 Kingswood Estate (metallic pea green with the woodie exterior and a matching green interior) had what I always thought was the coolest feature ever--apparently GM advertising dept. thought guys with a lot of kid would think it was cool too because they used it in the advertising collateral! The back door went down and disappeared under the car and the window went up and disappeared into the roof! As a 11 year old boy, it reminded me of garbage truck compactor!
There was only one thing that I thought was cooler in any wagon made and that was the blue windows in the roof of the Oldsmobile Vista Cruisers. My friend's parents had one like the blue one shown below. I remember telling my dad that we should get one of those after riding in my friends and he said, "That is a Class B station wagon and it is not big enough for a family our size. My boy, we need a Class A wagon like the Kingswood Estate!" Spoken with the pride that only a guy with 7 kids who has to drive a station would have. The one pictured below is identical to the one we had. I am sure this is the wagon that they were trying to duplicate when they made the Wagon Queen Family Truckster for "Vacation"!
Tim
