Black vinyl has been hand-fitted to the headliner. Even the hideaway compartment is carpeted. It's got more black carpet than the boogie van of the kid next door. The interior of the new Boss Wagon follows through with the black-out treatment. The wheels are taken directly from the Volvo 242 GT but they owe their impact to paint and polish. The car's front end and rectangular headlights duplicate Volvo's new look for 1978. The intricate fiberglass chin spoiler was taken from a three-piece mold fabricated by Dave Kent-the man responsible for actually painting the car-and Castellano. The car looks serious, and the application of Kal-Gard, a flat-black baked-on paint, to all the chrome surfaces lends BW3 the mean look of a missile cruiser. The paint scheme of Cadillac gray and Porsche anniversary silver seems to lower the car right onto the ground. When Boss Wagon III jumps into your rear-view mirror, you'll know it. We arranged for Volvo to send off an appliance-white 265 DL to Tom Castellano of Castell Enterprises to be reborn. These days Volvo wagons are as trendy as the 1940 Ford woody, so we decided to feed our station wagon fantasies with a Volvo too. So when the time came to order another magazine command module, we figured the world was ready for another bucks-up station wagon. But recently the times have come around again to fast wagons. Later, of course, vans and trucks became the performance freak's station wagon surrogates. In the age of brawny cars, a 120-mph station wagon made perfect sense. Two years later, Cousin of Boss Wagon rolled into the Red Ball Garage-an Oldsmobile Vista-Cruiser 455 injected with every performance option that the muscle-car era had to offer. Thanks to a shrewd bout with the option sheet, it actually went around corners and had a 383-cubic inch engine stronger than hog's breath. It was a Plymouth Fury Wagon the size of a pocket battleship. That was how the first Boss Wagon was invented in 1966.

To a magazine that gets into as many different kinds of trouble as this one, it's always been important to have the best multi-purpose vehicle available. It's capable of carting test equipment, pulling a trailer of motorcycles or functioning as New York's finest cut-and-thrust airport limousine. The station wagon is an obvious solution to this simple problem. If you, can throw it all into the back of a fast car, so much the better. Americans have always followed the road to its vanishing point, but from the Conestoga to the moon buggy the idea has always been to be prepared for anything once you get there. Station wagons are pretty nice items to have around. From the December 1977 issue of Car and Driver.

Gunship iii steering on ground