Station Wagons - Tailgate Evolution

Tailgate Evolution

Many modern station wagons have an upward-swinging, full-width, full-height rear door supported on gas springs—often where the rear window can swing up independently. Historically, wagons have employed numerous designs:

• Split gate: The earliest common style was an upward-swinging window combined with a downward swinging tailgate. Both were manually operated. This configuration generally prevailed from the earliest origins of the wagon bodystyle in the 1920s through the 1940s. It remained in use through 1960 on several models offered by Ford. This style was later adopted on aftermarket camper shells for pickup trucks, seeing that pickup trucks already had a bottom half tailgate as an OEM feature.
• Retractable window: In the early 1950s, tailgates with hand-cranked roll-down rear windows began to appear. This was another innovation first seen on Rambler wagons. Later in the decade, electric power was applied to the tailgate window—it could be operated from the driver's seat, as well as by the keyhole in the rear door. By the early 1960s, this arrangement was common on both full-size and compact wagons.
• Side hinge: A side hinged tailgate that opened like a door was offered on three-seat wagons by American Motors to make it easier for the back row passengers to enter and exit their rear-facing seats. This was later supplanted by the dual-hinged tailgate.
• Retractable roof: The Studebaker Wagonaire station wagon had a unique retractable rear roof section as well as a conventional rear tailgate which folded down. This allowed it to carry tall objects that would not fit otherwise. Water leaks, body flex and noise prevented the innovation from being adopted by other manufacturers. The concept was reintroduced in 2003 on GMC's mid-size Envoy XUV SUV.
• Dual and tri-operating gates: Ford's full-size wagons for 1966 introduced a system marketed as "Magic Doorgate"—a conventional tailgate with retracting rear glass, where the tailgate could either fold down or pivot open on a side hinge—with the rear window retracted in either case. Competitors marketed their versions as a Drop and Swing or Dual Action Tailgate. For 1969, Ford incorporated a design that allowed the rear glass to remain up or down when the door pivoted open on its side hinge—marketing the system, which had been engineered by Donald N. Frey ) as the "Three-Way Magic Doorgate". Similar configurations became the standard on full-size and intermediate wagons from GM, Ford, and Chrysler. GM added a notch in the rear bumper that acted as a step plate; to fill the gap, a small portion of bumper was attached to the doorgate. When opened as a swinging door, this part of the bumper moved away, allowing the depression in the bumper to provide a "step" to ease entry; when the gate was opened by being lowered or raised to a closed position, the chrome section remained in place making the bumper "whole".
• Clamshell: Full-size GM 1971–1976 wagons (Buick, Chevrolet, Oldsmobile, and Pontiac) featured a 'clamshell' design where the rear power-operated glass slid up into the roof as the tailgate (manually or with power assist), dropped below the load floor. The power tailgate ultimately supplanted the manual tailgate, which required marked effort to lift from storage. Subsequently, GM reverted to the doorgate style for its full-size wagons.
• Liftgate: A simplified, one-piece liftgate on smaller wagons. The last generation of GM's full-size wagons returned to the upward-lifting rear window as had been used in the 1940s.
• Swing-up window: An upward-lifting, full-height, full-width rear door, where the window on the rear door can be opened independently from the rear door itself. The window is also opened upwards and is held on gas struts. The Renault Laguna II estate featured this arrangement.
• Fold-up license plate: Wagons (including the Volvo Amazon wagon and early models of the Range-Rover) had an upward folding hinged plate attached to the lower tailgate of the split rear door. When the tailgate was folded down, the plate hung down and remained readable.