Hot wagons incoming! VW Golf R Wagon, Subaru WRX Sportswagon, Genesis G70 Shooting Brake, BMW M3 Touring ... and maybe a Toyota GR Corolla wagon?

What was once the drab, dreary and undesirable wagon might be in the midst of an epic transformation.

And that's because car makers are waking up to the fact that some customers might want the practicality of an SUV without the higher ride height and, often, compromised dynamics.

But what's better than a wagon? A fast wagon.

Read More About Subaru WRX

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For those with a lust for speed and a load of stuff to lug, there’s a multitude of speedy wagons either already on sale or about to hit new car showrooms, and there’s some particularly tasty metal among them.

Subaru WRX Sportswagon

If you’re a late Gen-Xer or early Millennial, you might recall that Subaru used to sell a wagon version of its WRX a few generations ago. With a turbo flat four driving all four wheels AND a big wagon rump grafted onto what was otherwise the sedan body style, the WRX Sportswagon made up for its compromised aesthetics with enhanced everyday usability. Sadly, the last time a WRX wagon was available was back in 2007, with Subaru ditching the body style in favour of a regular five-door hatch for the third-gen Impreza.

But it’s coming back! Kind of.

Next year Subaru Australia will revive the WRX Sportswagon for a new era, however it’s largely a rebadged new-generation Levorg. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind you – the WRX badge has better brand equity in this country so it should sell better than the often-overlooked Levorg, plus the new Levorg is an objectively attractive wagon – but it won’t simply be a WRX with a six-window turret and a tailgate.

For enthusiasts, the biggest drawback lies in the transmission – the Aussie WRX Sportswagon will be strictly a CVT automatic-only affair. Even so, with its 2.4-litre turbo flat-four shared with the WRX sedan (which generates 202kW and 349Nm), it should still be swift enough. Another positive: it shares none of the more awkward styling cues of the WRX sedan.

Skoda Octavia RS wagon

Skoda doesn’t suffer the same issue as Subaru when it comes to hi-po wagons, with its Octavia RS wagon scoring the same mechanical package as its hatchback brother (yes, we know it looks like a sedan) and virtually the same level of performance and specification as a result.

With a 180kW/370 turbo 2.0-litre inline four and seven-speed dual-clutch automatic taking power to the front wheels, the Octavia RS wagon is an appealing fusion of speed and utility, with the pace of a hot hatch yet enough room to take the family Labrador to the vet – and maybe the cat too.

Compromises? Grafting a big rump on the back of a car comes with a weight penalty, and for the Octavia RS that penalty is 30kg. However, it’s a marginal enough difference that the RS wagon’s 0-100km/h time and average fuel economy figures are identical to the hatchback, making the wagon a zero-compromise choice. Well, as long as you’re okay with its $49,090 before on-road costs pricetag and the $1300 premium it carries over the hatch.

VW Golf R Wagon

At the end of the first quarter next year, the Golf R returns to Australia as the pinnacle of the eighth-generation Volkswagen Golf range. More crucially the wagon body style will be getting the ‘R’ treatment too, giving the seventh-gen Golf R wagon a direct successor and giving Australian revheads a faster way to collect sheets of plywood from Bunnings.

We’ll leave it up to you to decide which metric is the more exciting one: the Golf R Wagon’s 235kW/420Nm power and torque outputs, its 4.9-second 0-100km/h sprint, 250km/h top speed, or its 611-litre seats-up luggage capacity (1642L with the back seats down!).

Oh, did we mention it’ll have a drift mode?

Genesis G70 Shooting Brake

Got more refined tastes? The premium segment has a few fast wagons to offer too, with one of the most alluring being the incoming Genesis G70 Shooting Brake.

Arriving as part of the 2022 facelifted G70 family, the G70 Shooting Brake puts a greater emphasis on style than load-lugging versatility, with a shallowly-raked tailgate and tapering roofline making it more like an overgrown fastback than a traditional wagon. In fact, with a conventional four-window glasshouse (rather than the six-windows of a regular wagon/estate), the G70 Shooting Brake has more in common with a hatchback than a true wagon.

Still, isn’t it pretty? What’s more, with the option of a 3.3-litre twin-turbo petrol V6 making 274kW/510Nm and drive being sent to the rear wheels via an eight-speed paddle-shifted automatic, the G70 Shooting Brake’s good looks will be matched by its genuine athletic ability.

BMW M3 Touring

This one has been a long time coming. Performance fanatics have been screaming “do an M3 wagon!” in the direction of Munich for several generations of 3 Series, but BMW pretended not to hear them, instead handing the ‘fast premium wagon’ niche to Audi and Mercedes-Benz with their RS4 Avant and AMG C63 Estate.

No longer. An M3 Touring was finally confirmed last year for the G80 generation, something of a miracle considering BMW’s existing X3 M already fills the brief of “useful, but fast” and makes use of the same S58 engine that’s found in the current M3 – except with 50Nm more torque.

Still, let’s appreciate the fact that BMW is finally giving the fans what they’ve wanted. It’s not here yet, but with the M3’s 353kW/550Nm turbo inline-six squeezed into a widebody wagon bodyshell (just look at the extra girth in the teaser shot!), we’re definitely excited for this one.

Toyota GR Corolla wagon

(Image credit: BestCarWeb)

File this one under ‘Hopeful Optimism’. With Toyota is staying officially quiet on the subject, it’s no great secret that a performance variant of the Toyota Corolla is in the pipeline.

We’ll have to wait for it though, with production delays making what was supposed to be a 2021 car into a 2022 car – late 2022. When it arrives though, the Corolla hot hatch may come packing a nifty surprise – a hot wagon sibling.

That’s right. While the Corolla is a hatch and sedan-only proposition here in Australia, other markets (principally Europe) also get a wagon option. Enthusiast mags in Japan have confidently reported that the GR Corolla formula will also get applied to the load-lugger, meaning a 200kW-plus output from a 1.6-litre turbo three-cylinder (itself derived from the rorty GR Yaris powerplant), the same multi-mode GR-Four all-wheel-drive system and a manual transmission.

Couple that with a body that’s 20mm wider and 10mm lower, and the GR Corolla wagon could be one of the most appealing fast wagons around. Whether it comes to Australia is far less certain.