wagon

[GUEST2008]

Hi

She was looking at the slowly departing medical examiner's wagon.

"Wagon" - what kind of car is it? A van?

 

[Ouisch]

Yes, today it would be a van of some sort. Hundreds of years ago, it would've been a horse-drawn wagon, and that particular name has stuck.

 

[SoothingDave]

This kind of car can be considered a wagon, short for "station wagon." (The auto industry likes to call them "crossovers" now because "station wagon" sounds like something old fashioned.

Station wagon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

They used to look like this:

 

[opa6x57]

Hi

She was looking at the slowly departing medical examiner's wagon.

"Wagon" - what kind of car is it? A van?

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Not a teacher, 53-year-old American.
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There is a rude-sounding term sometimes used to refer to the medical examiner's vehicle or to refer to a hearse - "meat wagon". It is possible that the quote above is using the shortened version of 'meat wagon'.

Another possibile reference is that medical examiners typically use station wagon style vehicles (precursor to the SUV) with all but the front seats removed. So, the medical examiner's vehicle might well have actually been a station wagon - and the writer simply dropped the word 'station' to make the sentence read better.

Here's a description of a station wagon - from Wikipedia:

A station wagon or estate car is a body style variant of a sedan/saloon with its roof extended rearward[1] over a shared passenger/cargo volume with access at the back via a third or fifth door (the liftgate or tailgate), instead of a trunk lid. The body style transforms a standard three-box design into a two-box design — to include an A, B & C-pillar, as well as a D pillar. Station wagons feature flexibility to allow configurations that either favor passenger or cargo volume, e.g., fold-down rear seats.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines a station wagon as "an automobile with one or more rows of folding or removable seats behind the driver and no luggage compartment but an area behind the seats into which suitcases, parcels, etc., can be loaded through a tailgate." The dictionary also calls the term an "Americanism."

That's my opinion.

 

[GUEST2008]

Thank you very much for all these replies guys!