There’s an entire generation of the Western world that knows Volvo as a wagon company. As my colleague Thomas Hundal pointed out back in March, the brand and the bodystyle are culturally intertwined, with cars like the iconic 240 seared into people’s brains as the go-to runabout for New England’s yuppie crowd and college professors nationwide.
Though the public’s perception of the station wagon has shifted drastically since the 240’s debut, Volvo’s desire to sell wagons to Americans persisted all the way up until this year, when it finally pulled the V60 and the V90 Cross Country from U.S. dealers. The regular V90 was discontinued for America in 2021, and now, both variants are dead globally. That leaves just the V60 as Volvo’s last remaining wagon. How times change.
The V90 has been around since 2016 in its current form, but its roots can be traced back all the way to the ’90s, when Volvo sold its executive-sized wagon under a different name: 960. By 1996, the wagon version of that car had been renamed the V90, before going out of production just two years later. As before, the current V90 shared its bones with its S90 sedan counterpart (a car that was also discontinued for the U.S. earlier this year).
While it’s incredibly sad to see yet another wagon bite the dust, I can’t say I’m terribly surprised. Wagons have been out of fashion for years now, with the vast majority of automakers abandoning the bodystyle altogether. The only reason Volvo was still able to sell wagons in the U.S. was by copying Subaru’s Outback strategy – in 2005, it raised the ride height and added plastic body cladding to the Volvo V70, creating the XC70 Cross Country. This strategy lasted for years, extending to the V60 and V90.
But even Volvo SUV-ifiying its wagons couldn’t save them. Sales of the V60 and V90 were absolutely minuscule last year in the U.S., representing only a tiny fraction (2%) of all Volvo sales. Specifically, Volvo sold just 532 V90 Cross Countries in all of 2024. People just don’t want wagons unless they’re high-performance Autobahn bruisers.
It wasn’t just in America where the V90 floundered in sales. Volvo only sold 9,939 V90s and V90 Cross Countries globally last year, representing 1.3% of all sales.
The last V90 rolled off its assembly line in Torslanda, Sweden sometime last month, according to the Volvo Cars Heritage division. Instead of being unceremoniously sold away to a private owner, it’ll be retained by Volvo and kept at the World of Volvo Museum, located in central Gothenburg. If you want to pay tribute to Volvo’s vast wagon history, you’ll find it sitting alongside cars like the P220, the 960, and my personal favorite, the 145 (pictured below).
As Volvo points out in its announcement of the V90’s demise, you still have some time to buy a new V90 if you really want one, as there are still a few Cross Country models sitting unsold at dealerships across the U.S. (54 cars, according to a quick nationwide search on Cars.com). It could be your last chance to buy a new big, European-built wagon that isn’t a turbocharged German rocketship for a long, long time.
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