Full confession: The last time I hit the road for any kind of distance, I did not want to risk getting out of bed. I didn’t want to see daylight, didn’t want to ingest anything other than water and migraine medicine, and was not fit to interact with the public. I made the drive anyways, and the drive back…four hours each way thanks to traffic, in a vehicle whose seat was hell-bent on killing my lower back. It was on the return trip, stuck in the middle of Nashville stand-still traffic while searching through the satellite radio stations, that it happened: “Holiday Road” by Lindsey Buckingham started blaring through the speakers. I was one five-minute, foul-mouthed tirade away from being my very own National Lampoon’s movie. That is what really spurned on today’s find, because if you’re a gearhead who likes a good movie and a good laugh, surely you’ve seen the original, the centerpoint of which is a battered pea-green example of 1980s misery in rolling form looked like. The only redeeming factor to the station wagon from hell was durability…and the ability to fly fifty yards easily.

The strange thing about the Wagon Queen Family Truckster, the drunk-vision version of a 1979 Ford LTD Country Squire wagon that George Barris put together with love for Clark Griswold and company, is that it became iconic. It represented just about every wrong that was going on with the idea of a station wagon at the time. Think about all of the recreations of that avocado-colored, wood paneled monstrosity that have been made since the movie came out in 1983. An actual Griswold family (Steve and Lisa) built one and toured the movie’s route with their daughters before winding up at Six Flags Anaheim. (In the most recent Vacation movie that stars Ed Helms, it’s the vehicle in the garage). 24 Hours of Lemons star “Speedycop” built one that was detailed down to the dog leash hanging off of the rear bumper. And then there is this one that is going to go across the auction block at Barrett-Jackson’s Palm Beach event.

The car itself is a typical 1981 Ford wagon: 302 underhood, early AOD transmission, and suspension as soft as a marshmallow. But you don’t buy something like this for the sake of it’s performance capabilities. You buy it because it’s a rolling memory bank to a movie that many love. And you know what we think? That opens up the door to awesomeness. The hard part is done…you have, for all intents and purposes, the Family Truckster. Add power. Beef up the trans. Add the good cop parts and brakes that this car desperately needs. Go nuts. Just don’t change one single thing about how it looks, and make sure you hit the road often.

Barrett-Jackson’s Palm Beach 2019: Lot #375 – 1981 Ford LTD Country Squire “Wagon Queen Family Truckster” re-creation