If you arrive in Malibu with surfboards loaded on top, piloting this mammoth Chevrolet Townsman vehicle, you will definitely be the “boss“. The Townsman was the first and largest post WWII station wagon produced by Chevrolet with three rows of removable seats accommodating up to eight passengers. In this NFT, aptly titled “Boss“, we have a fascinating collision of cultures summarized in one image. Let me break it down for you.

In the 20th century, booming populations worldwide embraced swimming. That may seem surprising to you, but the fact was that swimming was not considered to be a healthy habit. Many people feared the chills or fever-inducing germs that could lurk in the water. It’s a bit odd, given that some of the most powerful poetry written in the 19th and early 20th centuries was about how immersion of the body in the sea could be extraordinarily healing and beneficial to the soul and body.

Transmutation of the soul is one thing, but we’re here to talk about wooden wagons and how they changed, evolved, developed, and defined utility in the form of a woodie wagon, now transformed into a highly sought-after collectible cultural icon on four wheels, able to transport and shelter surfers at the beach.

It wasn’t until the 20th century that swimming gained widespread recognition as a health habit. In the United States, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) built many public bathing establishments to encourage the population to learn swimming for safety reasons and its health benefits. The international Olympic competition also inspired interest in swimming. After all, surfing is impossible without swimming, and mastering the sport requires exceptional swimming skills to stand up to the waves that will really take you on a long, tubular ride. The Polynesians and the Hawaiians excelled at this, and they set the pace for the rest of the world to begin experimenting with the new sporting pursuit named surfing.

The development of surfboard manufacturing also underwent a technological transformation in the 20th century. Originally, surfboards were crafted out of solid wood, but with the rise of the aeronautical and aviation industries, there was a tremendous boom in housing construction for workers as well as aviation component construction. Many subcontractors honed their woodworking skills on wartime aviation contracts. After the war, they sought new purposes for their unique skills. The invention of the hollow board happened in the San Fernando Valley, just east of Malibu by some renowned woodworking companies. Hollow boards were fashioned by ranch-style home fabricators as an additional revenue source for their assembly line techniques. You can easily imagine how the inside of a hollow board resembles that of a roof trestle or the cross-section of an airplane wing.

So, man, who could now swim and was armed with a lightweight surfboard needed a way to haul his body, soul, and board to and from the beach. Hence, the undiscovered utility of abandoned woodie wagons evolved from an inexpensive, discontinued class of wooden-bodied depot hacks repurposed as beach boy wagons.

The utility underpinning the development of woodie wagons was formed and named “depot hacks,” which were specialty-built transportation to ferry rail passengers, two and from the station and their accommodations, be it a lodge or a village center. Over time, the term "railroad depot" evolved into "railroad station," and "hacks" were transformed into "wagons." This transformation eventually led to the adoption of the name "station wagon."

In a sense, customer preference played a pivotal role in the evolution of depot hacks to station wagons, SUVs, and crossovers. It was only through the buying public’s preferences that the dialogue between original equipment manufacturers ( OEMs) and consumers could develop this utilitarian vehicle which suited many drivers’ needs.

Malibu Ranch, originally a Spanish land grant, was controlled by a single family, who owned a vast parcel of land along the coast and running up the Malibu Canyon. Their land was private property, and it was off-limits for many surfers in the early days of surfing. Eventually, the call of the wild was too great for surfers to ignore, and they would trespass across private property to launch their boards into the Pacific. They gambled on a reasonable certainty that the police would not be mounting up on a surfboard to pull them over.

Malibu Canyon developed its own narrow-gauge railway and a shipping dock, so you can imagine that many woodie wagons were used in ferrying produce and the famous Catalina Malibu tiles to and from the local Malibu port.

The family vehemently opposed the arrival of the railroad and successfully prevented it from entering Malibu Canyon. This is why there is no complete right-of-way for railroads along the entire California coast. However, with the development of Highway One along California's western coast, more surfers gained access to the beaches.

The San Fernando Valley, east of Malibu, was a prominent aviation and aeronautic center in the United States for many years. Manufacturing for hollow boards was centered in the San Fernando Valley, and because the Valley was situated in close proximity to Malibu, the woodworkers could easily test-drive their new boards.

Uniquely, Malibu experiences significant swells during the summer months due to tidal action forming south of the equator off the coast of Central and South America. These enormous waves can navigate through the various outer islands that protect Southern California from the powerful northwestern swells of the winter Pacific Ocean. Consequently, Malibu offers exceptional surf breaks for the southern hemisphere's tidal action during the summer months.

This Chevrolet Townsman Station Wagon is the result of major factory retooling in the post-World War II era. Because no new cars were built during the war, only trucks came off the assembly line after war’s end, so trucks were the first new vehicles available to U.S. customers. The assembly line continued to run with the commercial product they were optimized for until passenger cars were designed in line with new production capabilities.  New cars arrived around 1949 for Ford and Chevrolet, and this Townsman is the first large-capacity wagon that Chevrolet produced post-WWII.

Post-war, the wooden body construction that was previously subcontracted out to professional coach builders in the pre-war era was eliminated. WWII, which forced the efficiency of assembly lines across the United States, also gave them new materials to work with, such as an abundance of sheet metal and the ability to shape it into new complex forms. As a consequence, woodie wagons were discontinued in the late 1940s, but this Townsman retains some beautiful wooden trim along its side. To this day, wood is still used as an interior accent on some of the most luxurious cars manufactured.

With the Beach Boys playing in the background, the Gidget novel in print, highway access to Malibu beach, and a surplus of inexpensive wooden-bodied utility vehicles to haul their hollow boards, the surfing culture boomed. This is the ethereal thread that connects our station wagon vehicles to the SUVs and hatchbacks produced in the early 21st century.

Like Professor Albus Dumbledore of Hogwarts, I find myself stirring the pensive, pondering the memory strands that connect my life, seeking to understand why I was compelled to create something not consciously conceived at the outset. The artwork “Boss” is created from different elements created at different times. Only with hindsight do I gain the perspective to put various elements together in a way that represents something I must have been subconsciously thinking at the moment the shutter fell, or the final pixel was inscribed. Writing about these invisible threads and publishing them on blockchain for provenance helps me comprehend some of the driving forces behind car culture.

Boss

🚗 ⚙️ **CarMania: Woodie Wagon Series** Collect the Classics. Cruise the Future. This limited edition Woodie Wagon is part of the CarCulture: CarMania Garage collection. Each NFT provides exclusive access to our AI chat system where you can ask questions about your specific vehicle and learn its history.

https://manifold.xyz

This article about Car Culture is inscribed on blockchain, ensuring that it can be read for another hundred years and probably more. A new form (blockchain) for an old function—to educate and inform the future.

The accompanying CarMania artwork celebrating this woodie wagon and surfing culture is also stored on blockchain. I inscribed this artwork onchain as a sacred sign for the next generation of surfers who ride the elemental wave. Is this limited edition NFT the new collectible?

Ride the wave with me, and know thy people and their cars.

Please follow and collect my work to spread and persist the knowledge and lore surrounding surfing and the invention of the automobile circa 1885, not unlike the explosion of technology that began in the 20th century. This woodie wagon series will be coming to an end soon and we will move onto other roadside topics.

Join the CarMania garage and Collect this NFT, especially if you a surfer. It’s part of your heritage.

One of the sources for this article is the fabulous book, The World in the Curl by Peter Westwick and Peter Neushal. Highly recommended.