Cadillac tried to avoid a traditional wagon design for its CTS Sport Wagon.

For most of us, the classic American station wagon — with its acres of fake woodgrain siding, sticky vinyl bench seats and lazy-revving V-8 engine — is a fixture of our collective automotive consciousness. It is also extinct. The gas crises of the ’70s hobbled it, the minivans of the ’80s dealt a knockout blow and the SUVs that followed stomped on its grave.

Could the new Cadillac CTS Sport Wagon — the only American-brand station wagon now available in this country — be a green shoot that portends a revival of this American archetype?

Not a chance. Instead, this car’s inspiration comes from Europe.

On the Continent, station wagons never were the wallowing land arks we knew, so today’s European car buyers aren’t scarred by that memory. And with Europe’s sky-high gas prices and narrow streets, SUVs make even less sense there than they do here, so Europeans who are engaged in all those much-talked-about “active lifestyle” pursuits — or who just need to carry a lot of stuff — often drive station wagons.

They drive so many of them, in fact, that it’s not unusual for station wagons to outsell their sedan counterparts. That explains why European carmakers haven’t dropped the body style — their home market loves it. Thus, most of the wagons sold here are European makes: Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo.

Cadillac ardently wants to be thought of as a legitimate competitor to those makes, and it would also like to increase its tiny business in Europe. “For us, with aspirations in Europe, it made sense to do a wagon,” said Steve Shannon, the Cadillac marketing director. “It’s a relatively inexpensive vehicle to do once you have the sedan. And we think that, over time, there will be some Europeanization of the U.S. market as vehicles get smaller, with smaller-displacement engines. A greater interest in wagons may also be a result.”

A new kind of wagon

Even if you knew nothing about European wagons, one look at the CTS Sport Wagon would dispel any notion that this is the second coming of the Country Squire. There’s nothing retro to it. Even more so than the CTS sedan, the wagon is a showcase for Cadillac’s faceted, angular design.

Take the liftgate, for instance. Instead of a flat plane, it comes to a point in the middle. And check out the bladelike taillamps, which extend from the bumper all the way to the roof. Particularly unusual for a wagon are the ultraslim rear-quarter windows and extra-wide rear pillars. They make it look as if Cadillac’s designers were afraid to let their wagon look like a wagon — and they were.

“There’s a stigma of what a wagon is, and I think what we were trying to do is something that was not a traditionally defined wagon,” said Clay Dean, Cadillac’s chief designer, who is also executive director for GM global advanced design. “The D-pillar is thicker than you would normally do; normally you’d thin that thing up as much as you can for visibility, but it was a conscious choice.”

Compromised style

From the driver’s seat, the low priority given to visibility is painfully evident, as the chunky pillars have a tendency to make cars in the adjacent lane disappear. Before changing lanes, precise adjustments of the side mirrors are advised, along with over-the-shoulder glances.

Look around the interior, and you see the cabin environment mirrors the CTS sedan’s. In the case of my test car, which had Premium trim, that meant nicely padded and stitched dash and armrest covers, a pop-up navigation screen with touch-screen controls and real wood trim.

In another compromise to style, the rakishly sloping roofline and forward-canted rear window shrink the luggage space. The cargo hold is well-finished — there are movable tie-down loops set in tracks on the carpeted floor, shallow bins underneath and a cover that can be propped up to help keep items from tipping over — but it is small. Unlike a crossover, however, the CTS wagon, with its low ride height and standard rear drive (all-wheel drive is optional), goes, stops and handles just like a sport sedan.

If the performance package is a bit extreme, the 3.6-liter V-6 is a logical upgrade over the standard 3-liter. With 304 horsepower and 273 pound-feet of torque, the bigger engine is considerably more potent than the base motor, which makes 270 horsepower and 223 pound-feet.

The mileage penalty is slim to none. With rear drive, the 3.6-liter’s 18 city/26 highway rating just trails the 3-liter’s 18/27. For all-wheel-drive versions, the rating is 18/26 with either engine.

Cadillac estimates a 0-to-60 mph time of 6.9 seconds for the Sport Wagon with the 3.6 and rear drive, which puts it about half a second behind the sedan. That is not too surprising considering the wagon weighs about 200 pounds more.

The extra weight, though, is not evident in the car’s handling. Chassis tuning is a strong point of the Cadillac CTS, and the wagon is no exception. The steering is pleasantly weighted and responsive. In the hard-core version I tested, the wagon cornered confidently even at speeds that would quickly get you drummed out of the neighborhood association.

Customizable

The ride is a little stiff and bouncy, but not bad overall. One of the two mellower suspension choices might pay off here and would probably not seriously degrade real-world handling.

In fact, one the most interesting aspects of the CTS Sport Wagon — one that stands in stark relief to its European competitors — is that it is available in nearly as many variations as the CTS sedan. With two engines, both available with rear-drive or all-wheel drive, and various trim levels, there are a total of 10 different setups. The only missing items are a manual transmission (available on the base CTS sedan) and the Nuerburgring-scorching V-series trim, which includes a 556-horsepower supercharged V-8. But even that base soon may be covered. Cadillac’s general manager, Bryan Nesbitt, has hinted that a CTS-V wagon is on its way.

Now that would be a station wagon that wouldn’t merely dim memories of the old ones, it would obliterate them with a cloud of tire smoke.