FOR some strange reason, I have always liked station wagons. Maybe because they are big and long and can compensate for something or, maybe, because as a child, we long for a more spacious and comfortable rear cabin that the cavernous interior of a wagon provides.
Anyway, the uncle in me has always fancied wagons and to this day, there are several that still make me turn twice. Among them are the Mercedes-Benz W123 wagon, the Peugeot 504 Weekend, the BMW E30 Touring and the Audi 100 C3 Avant.
The W123 captures everything about the principle of form following function to the “T” and that is why I love it.
The Peugeot 504 Wagon is so large and ungainly and yet, somehow, it is so stylish and Gallic. Anyway, I am just a sucker for French cars and it’s either this or the Renault 12 wagon.
The BMW E30 Touring is the first sport touring in my mind, a proper driver’s car in wagon form.
Meanwhile, the Audi 100 C3 Avant is just drop dead gorgeous; it looked like it missed a date as a show car and skipped straight to the factory as a production model.
When it first came out, it stopped me in my tracks because there was simply no other wagon like it.
For the first time, a German car company, and not just any German car company but its most sensible one — the one run by engineers more than stylists or designers — decided to produce a car where function bowed before form like a bullied 8-year-old.
The sloping rear glass compromised the load area, giving it very little advantage over a well-designed hatchback but no one really cared.
You can go back and search the archive of any motoring publication and I dare you to find anyone complaining about the lack of load-carrying capacity.
At best, it is mentioned apologetically like I would gloss over Winona Ryder’s inability to make decent nasi lemak, just because she is so gorgeous and talented.
I had to use Ryder as comparison because she also knocked my teeth in at about the same time when she appeared in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice.
Like they say in the world of beauty and fashion, it’s important to have good bones and the Avant certainly has the cheekbones for it.
The base Audi 100 model is elegant if a little plain but that just means that it looks like someone who can almost make it like a model but then comes a younger sister whom all the neighbourhood boys can’t help but to follow around like needy puppies.
Audis of that time were never really good looking but they were also never really ugly and had a definite purpose to their stance and style. This explains why a lot of Audi models continue to look the part to this day, even when compared to Mercedes-Benz or BMW-equivalent models.
The good bones of the model were honed in the wind tunnel and all that Audi could talk about at the time was the low drag coefficient of Cd0.30. We would have believed any number Audi claimed because the car looked really trim and neat and unbelievably clean.
Not a line was out of place and not a curve to big or too small and the airy six-light greenhouse made it look lightweight and modern.
When the Avant came, it somehow further enhanced that claim about low drag and made the car look even lighter and more modern.
It was an unbelievable transformation from modern to avant garde. To be honest, the Audi 100 Avant was the object of desire that really helped me to understand what avant garde means.
Living way up the yellow brick road in the dreamlike state of Kulim and Jenan in the 1980s, the Avant was never part of my immediate physical landscape, making its mark only through magazines and books.
Yet the image is still so sharp and clear today, just like the design.
To be fair, the CLS and CLA shooting brakes and the Audi Avants of today are pretty dramatic looking but they arrive looking sharp with the aid of accessories and fancy suits, rather than good bones.
The C3 Avant was a fragile beauty that one wanted to honour and protect while the new cars are more like the Xena warrior princess or Wonder Woman. She might be hot but there is every chance that she could break every bone in your body.
The C3 Avant remains as one of the great car designs of the 20th century because it was true to its intention of being a thoroughly modern car that incorporates all the best technology, materials and engineering. The beauty is a just a happy coincidence of a very well evolved design.
Form follows function at its prettiest.