It’s a new era in America. There will be no more Volkswagen wagons for sale in the U.S. The company has announced that it’s killing off the Golf Alltrack and the Golf SportWagen after the 2019 model year. 

This on top of the company producing the last of its icon Volkswagen Beetles earlier this year.

Falling off the wagon

Why is Volkswagen discontinuing wagons in the U.S.? 

There were no specifics on when production for the SportWagen would stop. There were rumors not long ago that the next-gen SportWagen wasn’t coming to the U.S. though most anticipated that the Alltrack would. While the announcement only addresses the current Mark 7 Golf, there’s still a chance the U.S. could see the Mark 8 Alltrack in the future.

While some may be genuinely surprised by this turn of events given America’s current love of SUVs, many feel disheartened. But it’s SUVs that Volkswagen now wants to focus on along with its crossover vehicles.

Crossovers and SUVs

SUVs made up over half of Volkswagen’s sales in the first half of 2019. The company says it sold 1,314 wagons in June 2019 which made up roughly one-third of total Golf sales. We don’t know how many of those were Alltrack and which were SportWagen, but it really doesn’t matter. Volkswagen sold 9,378 Tiguans in the same period of time. It perfectly illustrates why Volkswagen decided to capitalize on the American SUV trend.

Within the next two years, the automaker has three new crossovers coming to its lineup. The first one we’ll see is the Atlas Cross Sport which is a sporty two-row, streamlined version of the current Atlas.

Early next year, we’ll see a production model of the electric I.D. Crozz which will be the first I.D. model coming over to the states. In 2021, a new compact model is coming in under the Tiguan sub-brand and there’s speculation that it’s going to be the popular Tharu/Tarek.

With the Alltrack and SportWagen on the way out, wagon options in the U.S. will be fewer and fewer. The Golfs were the only wagons left on the U.S. market that had available manual transmissions.

What’s left, for now, are the Audi Allroad, Buick Regal TourX, the Jaguar XF Sportbrake, the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, the Subaru Outback, and the Volvo V60 and V90. Some of these quality wagons might meet the same fate in the near future. BMW is also discontinuing its 3-series wagon.

The future of Volkswagen

In the not-too-distant future, Volkswagen will debut the eight-generation Golf and fans are cautiously optimistic. It may only come over to the states as either a Golf R or GTI. According to the UK’s Autocar, a wagon version of the Mk8 might not be in the cards for the U.S. even though wagons are enjoying great popularity in Europe.

“As the ID Buzz concept demonstrates, the flexibility of our EV platform gives us the ability to revive body styles of the past, so anything is possible,” said Scott Keogh, Volkswagen’s American CEO.

Some Volkswagen and wagon fans are holding out hope that maybe one wagon version of the next-gen Golf will emerge and be available here in the U.S.

Others think the unconfirmed next-gen Golf variants are just subterfuge to limit any damage caused by the decision to nix the wagons. That way of thinking has merit. Rumors have it that other Golf models are “under consideration.” But when you consider that Volkswagen scrapped two out of the three Golfs (the base Golf remains), there seems little hope for an additional option.