Top 10 rare estates

By Martin Buckley

| 22 Feb 2019

Estate cars – or if you like, station wagons – of the classic era are no longer perceived as boring workhorses.

Far from it: in many cases they’re more interesting and collectable than the saloons they are based on and almost always a lot rarer; even the big wagons from the likes of Ford and Vauxhall were semi-coachbuilt special editions until the beginning of the ’70s.

We think they’re super-cool and to prove it here are 10 of our favourite load luggers that will cut as much of a dash at the polo club as they will at the builders’ merchants.

1. Jaguar Mk2 County

This car has an odd history even by the standards of rare estate cars.

The idea was first mooted by Duncan Hamilton and Mike Hawthorn, the Jaguar works D-type drivers. When they found they could not persuade Sir William Lyons to back the scheme, they decided to build and market an estate version of the Mk1 3.4 saloon themselves, with motoring artist Roy Nockolds advising on styling treatment.

The idea lost momentum after Hawthorn’s death, but a single example of a Mk2 Jaguar 3.8 was converted in the spirit of Nockholds’ design by the coachbuilders Jones brothers.

It was a particularly harmonious adaption, good enough that Jaguar subsequently acquired the County and used it for several years as a service barge at events such as the Tour De France. At one stage, it is thought to have been running a D-type engine!

In the ’70s the County hit hard times and was so rusty that a Birmingham trader chopped the extended roof and rear-end panels and glass off, and had them grafted on to a better Mk2. At the time, nobody cared!

Today, absurdly modernised with a Lexus V8 and other ‘upgrades’, it survives in a private collection.

2. BMW 3.0Si Panelcraft

In 135mph 3.0Si form these BMW E3-based estate cars were probably the fastest and most expensive load carriers of their time and thus very rare: total production may have numbered only four of the manual, 200bhp Si versions.

All came with a vinyl roof – more than likely to disguise the unsightly join between the saloon roof and the extended portion which was crudely butted together, pop-riveted and spot-welded. All were right hookers converted in the UK between 1972 and 1975.

The E3 estates had a semi-official status in that they were a joint venture between the official importers and one of the biggest BMW Dealers, Langley Motors of Thames Ditton. New or used cars could be converted and the model even had its own factory-style brochure entitled simply The BMW Estate Car.

Apart from a handful of cars converted for use as factory service-barges for the racing team, there was no will at BMW to build an in-house estate until the Touring version of the 3-Series in the mid ’80s.

3. Mercedes-Benz Universal

The idea of building factory-designed and constructed estates didn’t win many fans within Mercedes in the 1960s – the perception being that an estate, or ‘Kombi’ as the Germans called it, was a sort of semi-commercial vehicle for salesmen and builders.

They did, however, sanction Binz in Germany and IMA in Belgium to built estate versions of the various ‘fintail’ saloons and sell them through Mercedes dealers.

The IMA-built cars were only produced for a couple of years (1965-’67) and were marketed as the Universal based on the four-cylinder 200 or the twin-carb 6-cylinder 230S. They cost 33% more than the saloon equivalents.

In the UK, where the Universals were special-order only, they were two or three times the cost of a Ford or Humber estate. But on the plus side they often came with seven seats (end row rear-facing) and were generally engineered to a good standard.

4. Vauxhall PA Cresta Friary estate

Queen Elizabeth II had a variety of interesting and rare estate cars in the ’60s, which she would often be spotted driving herself, including a Countryman version of the Vanden Plas 3-Litre.

She was quite loyal to Vauxhall, however, and her PA Cresta estate – a catalogued production model built by Friary of Hampshire – is still in her collection. Finished in a non-standard green and fitted with fishing-rod holders, it is said to be one of her favourites.

For the 1962 PB and 1965 PC Cresta Estates, Vauxhall farmed the conversion out to Martin Walter, which was already building the Bedford Dormobile campervans. Once again, the Queen had her PC Cresta Estate finished in her favourite dark Balmoral Green and was still to be seen driving it in the 1980s – although it is thought to have been scrapped by Vauxhall when they had a clear out of their museum.

5. Jaguar XJ6 Series III Ladbroke-Avon estate

Even by as late as the early ’80s Jaguar hadn’t succumbed to the idea of an estate version of the ever-popular XJ; it was left to long-established coachbuilders Avon of Warwick to produce its slightly odd looking wagon version of the new Series III, complete with rear door from a Renault 5.

Launched at the British Motor Show in 1980, the Avon estate won awards for its build quality and was produced with the approval of Jaguar, who advised on rear spring rates for those who wanted to make the fullest use of the 58 cubic ft load capacity.

The conversion added £6500 on to the cost of the car, and for a further £475 you could have a third row of rear-facing seats. Avon planned to produce 250 but for various reasons that didn’t happen, and the final tally of XJ6 and XJ12 Series III estates is only thought to be around 20.

6. Rover P6 Estoura

The late-’60s Rover P6 estate was not a Crayford production but rather the concept of Nobby Fry of FLM Panelcraft; Crayford only agreed to do the marketing if Nobby changed the bizarre sloping roof line on the prototype. He agreed and it is thought as many as 400 were sold, mostly V8s, through H.R Owen and Hurst Park Automobiles.

The rear door on these was off the BMC 1100/1300 estate. While being intriguing, the Estouras were neither pretty nor particularly practical, with a very low-slung rear door.

The factory-built Triumph 2000 estates were much more elegant and usable and certainly a higher-quality production: little consideration was given to rustproofing when Panelcraft grafted on their rear-end structure to the original P6 body.

7. Ford Corsair Estate 2000GT

This Abbotts estate version of the Corsair was arguably the best looking of the firm’s Ford conversions; the Corsair’s Thunderbird-inspired shape lent itself to a long roofline and it somehow looks sportier and more distinguished than the saloon. It’s certainly much rarer, with only 940 built.

Mechanically, the estates were all 2-litre V4s – not one of Dagenham’s nicer engines, although it was mated to a delightful four-speed gearbox and would push the car to a respectable 91mph top speed in GT form: 3mph better than the saloon, suggesting that the shape was marginally more slippery.

Being more expensive but less commodious than the Cortina estate, the 1966-70 Abbott Corsair was never destined to be a big seller but, in fairness, it was a more pleasingly finished and luxurious sort of car than a standard load-lugger.

8. Humber Super Snipe Estate Series I, II, III, IV & V

Rootes had built estate versions of its previous generation of Super Snipes, but the later 1957-67 ‘Series’ cars gained a certain notoriety as police patrol vehicles and became a familiar sight on the newly opened M1 motorway, complete with warning signs and traffic cones.

This was the biggest unitary construction body built in Britain in the late ’50s, and when the series III was announced in 1961 it was the first British car with quad headlamps. In later 3-litre form they would just about touch 100mph and while the big Humbers were never about agility, they were at least nicely made and pleasingly refined.

The estates, built by the Austin Taxi makers Carbodies and featuring an American-style split tailgate, were only rivalled for load capacity by the Citroën DS. The few that survive now make surprisingly good money.

9. Fiat 2300 Familiare

These handsome, pleasingly finished 6-cylinder estates were fairly popular in the early ’60s, being an early example of a factory-built load carrier that had aspirations towards performance and luxury rather than pure utility. They are now almost extinct.

The polished marine-ply load area and plush seats indicated these were not intended as hold-alls to be abused, but rather as cars for the horsey set: Jack Barclay, London’s main Fiat agent, did a healthy trade in them.

Powered by Aurelio Lampredi’s 105bhp straight-six engine, the 2300 wagons would do almost 100mph but were hefty and ponderous to drive. The price in the UK was a limiting factor, although at £1400 the 2300 wagon was cheaper than a Citroën Safari or the Humber Super Snipe.

10. Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud Radford Countryman

Shooting brakes have been part of the Rolls-Royce and Bentley story from a very early stage.

Coachbuilder Harold Radford (most famous for his trendy, luxuriously modified Mini Coopers) did some of the best, beginning in 1948 with his Countryman conversion on the new Bentley Mk VI saloon, complete with half-timbered station wagon body aft of the windscreen.

This conversion was more a means of avoiding the massive tax on ‘luxury goods’ existing in the UK at the time as it was a way of satisfying a demand for posh estate cars: classed as a commercial vehicle, the Mk VI Countryman saved buyers many hundreds of pounds in purchase tax on the cost of the standard saloon.

When the tax rules changed, Radford decided to abandon the idea of fully coachbuilt cars and instead simply offered conversions of standard saloons; 11 R-Types and three 4 ½ litre Silver Dawns got his ‘Countryman’ treatment (folding rear seats, fish rod racks, electric windows and much more) but were externally standard.

In 1959, four Silver Clouds were built to estate specification, with HJ Mulliner carrying out the bodywork modifications and Radford doing the interior. And what an interior it was: split tailgate, folding seats (with the possibility of a bed) and ‘vanity basins’, Webasto sunshine roof, a picnic set, kettle, ‘toadstool’ cushions for the rear overriders, fishing-rod containers in the sills and much more – the list of possible modifications topped 50 items.

Arguably, these are the ultimate in classic wagons and make £500,000 plus when they come up for sale.

Images: Alberto Novelli (Rolls-Royce Radford), Crayford Convertible Car Club (Jaguar XJ6 Avon), Redsimon/Creative Commons (Rover P6 Estoura), Tony Baker

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