After reading Ollie’s post about a love for woodies I had to ask, is the fascination with woodies a guy thing? Yes, I’m sure some of you took the headline and the opening sentence to a naughty place, but, I’m serious. I’ve had a soft spot in my heart for the fake woodgrain on a vehicle for a long time. My first love was the Jeep Grand Wagoneer. Despite claims made by Ford, these were the original luxury SUV. When I was far too young to drive my mom had an aunt and uncle who owned a few of these things. They were kind of well off so they traded vehicles every couple of years even though what they traded in looked as new as what they were buying.
I will never forget the story about the last or next to last one they had. They had purchased a rare/hard to get/much loved color Grand Wagoneer. They always dealt with the same sales rep at the same dealership. One day he showed up with a shiny new different color waggie and told them someone wanted theirs and was basically buying this one for them to get theirs. Yes, it had all of the toys, but was one of the ickier color combos like the white with red interior. (People should be shot for coming up with the red leather interior!) Off he drove with theirs and then waggies got really hard to come by because AMC was in dire financial straights.
When it came time to purchase my first vehicle I had nowhere near the money required for a waggie. I ended up with an $800 blue Buick Skyhawk hatchback. It had a V-6, 4-speed and an 8-track tape player. Sorry, I had to link to a photo because I didn’t want to go looking for old photo albums to scan. I’m sure there is a picture of it somewhere, but it will be an actual photo. I had to buy my car and pay my insurance and buy most of the gas. My parents didn’t want me to have anything too expensive because kids tend to wreck their first car. I’m proud to say the Skyhawk went to its next owner without having been wrapped around or piled into anything else. All in all it wasn’t a bad car. I think it got something like 23 MPG with me, a teenage boy, behind the wheel.
When I went to junior college, actually in my second year, the woodgrain had a pull on me. My parents had put the bug in my ear about getting a newer vehicle and I had a desperate fascination with the AMC Eagle SX/4 hatchback. I think I spent 6 months negotiating with a local dealer and looking through newspaper ads (we didn’t have Internet then.) Parents being parents wanted me to get a bigger, less sporty car. Their logic was it had to take me away to college and last through my first couple of kids. The fact I never wanted kids wasn’t allowed to be part of the math. Still, a bigger car to haul all my stuff away in made sense and I started the desperate search for an Eagle station wagon I could afford. A few people in the area dad knew had them and they had good things to say.
Keep in mind I live out in the country and back then we had snow. I’m not talking about just a few flakes, I’m talking drifts 12 feet tall around the building sites were the norm. I mean snowmobiles are considered Red Neck toys now, but, back then farmers had to have them because for several weeks out of the year that was the only way to get to town for groceries or to get to an alternate building site to feed and care for livestock twice per day. Hence the 4-wheel-drive feature (common today but a first then) was a major selling point. The used Eagle station wagons cost $8 grand more than the used Concord station wagons so I ended up with one of those. Sadly I did not end up with this beauty. Mine was a flat gray with a red cloth interior. (Whoever came up with red interiors for cars should be shot!) It’s a good thing I didn’t stumble onto that beauty when it was for sale in 2012 because it would probably be in the shed with my bucket truck and other toys. That 258 in-line 6 was the most durable motor ever built. Whoever had this ride through the beginning of 2012 treated it better than most parents treat their kids.
Oh, fear not little reader. I did get to sit behind the woodgrain when I was logging tons of billable hours, after having built a 3 car garage to use as my office and a 30-something x 60-something storage shed. I got my first waggie. It was a project ride to be sure. Sadly I could not find any electronic photos of it and didn’t feel like digging through old photo albums. Well, that’s not exactly true. You can see it in a movie short. The trailer can be found here. Someone reached out to the FSJ (Full Sized Jeep) group I belonged to and after a couple of emails I rented Daniel Corches my waggie. I see by her filmography she has worked her way up to producer on a few things. Congrats girl! She opted not to purchase the color matching organ donor and use my trailer to get it to the film location (they needed an accident aftermath scene) so they ended up getting a local wreck and painstakingly covering it with contact paper to match.
The woodie fascination didn’t stop with the 1990 FSJ. I also picked up a 1990 Jeep Wagoneer Ltd. Thankfully I have quite a few electronic pictures of that thing. Granted it wasn’t a project vehicle when I got it (or at least not much of one) but 17 years later I was pouring way more money than brains into it just like it’s big brother after only a few years. Yes, having put engines in 2 Jeeps and rewired one nose to tail, I’m a bit past the “project vehicle” stage of life. I’ve had to drill and tap enough busted bolts to not want to do that anymore.
Nothing like drilling out manifold studs on an AMC 360. Thankfully those were tapered and had a hole in the end so you could tell when to stop before antifreeze came squirting out the hole. For those of you who don’t understand take a look at the image of this Ford set I found. What you think is a shadow on the end of those studs is actually a hole which goes back about half an inch. Yes, the end of the stud is hollow. This allows the head to heat expand without cracking itself over a solid bolt which is also trying to heat expand. It’s also nice when you are drilling that pilot hole because the tiny pilot bit hits that dead space and falls through to the head. It is an unmistakable time-to-stop-drilling indicator.
News stories and rumors abound that Jeep is _finally_ going to bring back the Wagoneer. Sadly, they are going to price it well beyond the boundaries of sanity, tipping the scales at around $100K fully loaded. And that isn’t counting custom built limo versions.
I know there are a subset of people who think something like this is cool.
Don’t ever do that to a waggie. There are plenty of other Jeep models out there to mistreat. Waggies are sacred and this is a mortal sin.
There has been no word yet on if the new Wagoneer, Grand or not, will have the required woodgrain. If it doesn’t have the woodgrain it is not a waggie, just a Cherokee with a tow package.
There have been a few times in the past where Jeep dusted off the woodgrain and offered it as an option. I had a chance at a few back in the day and missed them.
When I was a kid almost every brand of full sized station wagon had woodgrain as an option. Body shops used to hate it because one nick meant you had to replace the entire sheet, but when it was new it looked awesome. It actually still looked good on both of my waggies. Sometime during the late 1980s companies figured out what kind of UV (Ultraviolet) protective coating to put on the sheets of fake woodgrain making it mostly impervious to sun damage.
After Chrysler quick making the waggies (they purchased AMC which owned Jeep some years prior) they had to look around for something to do with all of the left over woodgrain. How shall I put this? Some experiments weren’t successful?
Okay, time to fess up! Be honest now. How many of you wouldn’t mind something with a bit of woodgrain on the outside?
Ah, now that’s what I call a very, very good article. Of course, there may be a detractor or two out there, but why pay any attention until they send a picture of their current ride.