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As the tooling and techniques for metalworking improved in the early 20th century, the use of wood as a structural component in car bodies gave way to its new role as a decorative element. But even when it was just used as a stylistic flourish, as was the case with the iconic and long-running Chrysler Town & Country, outfitting vehicles with genuine wood planking was a costly and labor-intensive process, and automakers were starting to find ways to fake it. When durable, automotive-grade vinyl graphic appliqués hit the scene in the mid-1950s, the faux-wood revolution was in full swing, the crass wood-grain pattern adorning everything from refrigerators to television sets; it was only a matter of time until a crafty auto stylist put two and two together. Initially limited to use almost exclusively on station wagons, by the 1970s you rarely saw a wagon without vinyl faux-wood-grain siding, making them still pretty plentiful today. For that reason, the cars included here are the oddball, ill-conceived, and low-volume woodies from any era that defied the station-wagon stereotype. We’ve included models considered to be genuine SUVs, but no wagons. And that goes for aftermarket kits and concept cars, too. Does it pain us terribly to omit the 1980 Honda Civic Country woody wagon? Hell, yes. Read on to discover some of the unique woodies that have crossed history’s showroom floor.

The Chevette—you know, Chevy’s other Vette—was the brand’s big new-model intro for 1976. After years of peddling longer-lower-wider, Chevrolet touted the tin-box subcompact as “A New Kind of American Car.” While the base Chevette was the oh-so-base $2899 Scooter (which was stripped even of its back seat), the standard ($3098) Chevette could be dressed up as the Sport Coupe (with jazzy stripes and blackout trim), as the fire-breathing Rally Sport (bristling with 60 horsepower from its 1.6-liter four-cylinder, in place of a 52-hp 1.4-liter), or, taking a not-so-new page from American station wagons, as the Woody Coupe you see here.

For $306, the Woody Coupe package included wood-grain decals, along with bright window moldings and grille accents and wheel trim rings. There was more wood grain inside on the dash, as part of the “custom” interior, as well as a “sport” steering wheel and a day/night mirror. You might assume that the package was dropped after one year because it was too silly—but its 1977 replacement was the Chevette Sandpiper, with a cartoon bird decal on the side. —Joe Lorio

Chrysler’s Town & Country nameplate dates from the brand’s 1941 station wagon, a sort of rounded-back design credited to Chrysler president David A. Wallace. Its signature element was mahogany veneer panels with white ash wood framing. With the arrival of the postwar Chryslers for 1946, however, the wagon was gone, and the T&C nameplate instead graced four-door sedans and convertibles with the same mahogany-and-ash wood trim. Unusually, the four-door woody was available in the midrange Windsor series as well as the top-of-the-line New Yorker (the convertible came as a New Yorker only); in either case, the Town & Country was far more expensive than its unadorned equivalent. Other domestic automakers dropped their non-wagon woodies with the advent of their first postwar redesigns, but Chrysler stuck with them when its all-new ’49 models came out. A wagon—also with wood trim—returned, but the four-door T&C was gone; the Town & Country name was reserved for the convertible and the prototype of a new two-door hardtop that did not see production. The 1950 model year would be the last for wood-trimmed Chrysler coupes and convertibles, and the moniker reverted to the wagons. The Town & Country would go on to a long and varied future at Chrysler, carrying a generally diminishing association with the old-money lifestyle that allows one to have a house in town and another in the country, with the requisite staff to varnish one’s wood-sided car. —Joe Lorio

Call us crazy, but we think the world was a better place when you could buy a truck, tractor, refrigerator, milking machine, rifle, and lawnmower all from the same manufacturer. Back in the day, International Harvester was just such a manufacturer, and of its myriad products our favorite is the full-size D-series Travelall. Built from 1969 to 1975, the fourth-generation truck to wear the Travelall name is arguably best known for its role as the comically appropriate ride of Max Goldman in Grumpy Old Men. Someone give that propmaster a gold star.

Sure, its little brother, the Scout, gets all the attention and still has a pretty loyal following, but the Travelall wins our heart for its sheer size and literal “it’s a big box” styling. Available with a variety of engines up to IH’s 392-cube V-8 (AMC 401s were substituted when IH’s strategic reserves of 392s ran low), the Travelall was loved by RV types and, we presume, Mormon farmers. Still, when it came time to add that little extra showroom zing to the mighty Travelall beast, there was one go-to option: faux-wood vinyl appliqué! Sadly, after six years of loyal service, the Travelall was dropped in 1975 due to stagnant sales and a restructuring of the International Harvester brand. —Andrew Wendler

We may laugh at the PT Cruiser now, but back when it was introduced at the beginning of the century, Chrysler’s four-door hatchback was a force to be reckoned with. Heck, we even put it on our 10Best Cars list in 2001. Not one to let a good thing pass, Chrysler quickly capitalized on the car’s retro looks by adding faux-wood panels to the PT Cruiser’s exterior and called it the Woodie. Chrysler offered the package on 2002–2004 PT Cruisers for the sum of $895. Sadly, Chrysler never paired the Woodie package’s nostalgia with the powerful turbocharged engine of the PT Cruiser Turbo/GT. —Greg Fink

While the Chevrolet El Camino may be the first thing that comes to mind when someone says, “Hey, does Billy Ray Cyrus live here?” the 1957 Ford Ranchero actually beat the El Camino to market by two years. By 1970, the Ranchero was already on its fifth generation, and Ford figured it was time to treat its car/truck to the same faux-wood-siding appliqué treatment that it offered on its station wagons. With its new product, ingeniously dubbed the Ford Ranchero Squire, Ford once again beat Chevy to the punch, the bow-tie brand’s similarly vinyl-wood-grained El Camino Estate not making the scene until 1973. Built from the bones of Ford’s mid-size Torino, the Ranchero shared many of the trim and powertrain options of the sedan. While that may sound unexciting, savvy Ford fans realized that checking the right boxes could bring the torquey Cobra Jet, Cobra Jet Ram Air, or Super Cobra Jet 429-cubic-inch V-8s mated with axle ratios ranging from 3.25:1 to a tire-melting 4.30:1, turning the ho-hum hauler into a legitimate hauler of ass. Considering that the Ranchero had room for only two—three in a pinch—and a maximum people and payload capacity of approximately 1250 pounds, it’s amazing that Ford kept it in production until the dawn of the 1980s. The spirit of the Ranchero lived on unabated in the Australia-market Falcon Utility, a car/truck hybrid that managed to stay in production until 2016. —Andrew Wendler

Of all the “woody” models on this list, the Volkswagen Rabbit may be the most inexplicable. Seen in the photo above as displayed on the VW stand at the 1979 Chicago auto show, the Rabbit woody hit the scene when VW’s U.S. manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania was operating at less than 50 percent of capacity and the automaker was desperate to appeal to the domestic market and boost sales. Instead of playing up the car’s Teutonic character and efficiency as it had done with the über-successful Beetle and Microbus, it began trying to Americanize them with plush interiors, automatic transmissions, and, curiously, vinyl faux-wood exterior treatments. While the debate as to whether the vinyl-wood-grain Rabbits were born at the factory or a dealer-installed option rages on, thorough research on our part did turn up several official VW accessory brochures featuring the kits and at least one official NOS VW vinyl kit for sale. Regardless of origin, the vintage Mark I community has embraced the trend, with dozens of owners coming up with their own interpretations of the “woody” theme and applying it to their two- and four-door Rabbits and Rabbit pickups. —Andrew Wendler

Nothing says elegance like wood grain, and nothing suggests that you’re a devil-may-care fun seeker like a vehicle with a removable roof that has to stay home when you want the sun on the back of your neck. In 1972, it was possible to spec a woodlike tailgate decal, but when GM redesigned its full-size trucks for 1973, you now had the option of paying the General to stick faux lumber along the sides of your Chevrolet Blazer or GMC Jimmy as well. By the 1975 model year, the formerly healthy 350-cubic-inch V-8 was putting out a miserly 145 horsepower and 250 lb-ft of torque. Opting for a Quadrajet in place of the two-barrel Rochester netted only a 10-hp gain. Peak torque stayed the same but moved up the tach from 2200 to 2400 rpm. Two decades later, Chevy had the 5.7-liter V-8 breathing again, but in the darkest days of the Malaise Era, it seemed only fake plastic tree trunks could keep our spirits soaring. After 1980, for some inexplicable reason, General Motors ceded the wood-grain-covered large-ute market to Jeep. A decade and a half later, the Jimmy and Blazer nameplates had both been retired from full-size use. Alex Jones is probably pretty sure that the lack of wood had something to do with that. —Davey G. Johnson

Decades since its demise, the Ford Pinto nameplate still stands as an allegory of auto-industry greed and as a period piece from an era in which the domestic automakers were desperate to slow the onslaught of small cars from Japan. The Pinto isn’t likely to fade from pop-culture references and MBA syllabi any time soon, but this small car’s reputation in other ways has been coming back around. This little rear-wheel-drive two-door actually wasn’t the runt of the litter; in a 1971 Car and Driver matchup with the Chevrolet Vega, GM’s shorter-lived rival to the Pinto, we said the Ford had “the sharp-edged, go-stop-turn feel of a sports car.” The later years of the Pinto were known to be quite pleasant and well sorted out (it did share some parts with the Mustang II, after all). In certain “nerd car” circles, a good Pinto—especially a woody one—will get a lot of attention. Ford’s decision to wrap the exterior of its Pinto sedan and hatchback, and the corresponding Mercury Bobcat twin (in addition to the Pinto Squire wagon), in wood grain with a roof rack that looks set up for surfboards remains mostly just a point-and-chuckle non sequitur in that car’s more sobering history. —Bengt Halvorson

In the immediate postwar period, wood bodies weren’t just for station wagons; they were for convertibles and four-door sedans, too. The latter was the case for Nash and its Suburban, the wood-bodied variant of the upper-line Ambassador series.

Like all real-wood woodies, the Suburban was produced in minuscule quantities: 275 in 1946, 595 for ’47, 130 for ’48. Wood bodies were handsome, but maintenance was intense, what with annual varnishing—more like owning a boat than a car. The models also were expensive, about 20 percent more than the equivalent steel-bodied four-door. At Nash, the woody died with the move to an all-new unibody design for 1949. It’s doubtful that many mourned its passing. —Joe Lorio

The Plymouth Horizon and Dodge Omni were the first domestically produced subcompacts to adopt the layout of most European small cars, with a transverse engine, front-wheel drive, and a four-door hatchback. Their styling even aped the preeminent Euro hatch of the day, the Volkswagen Rabbit. But in at least one way, the Omni/Horizon twins were indisputably American: their long list of profit-padding options, including faux-wood-grain siding. The Premium Woodgrain package, $312 in the cars’ debut year, included not just the wood look on the body sides and lower hatch, but also a phalanx of chrome trim, along with bright wheel centers and lug nuts. (The Premium Exterior package also was available, for those who coveted that shiny chrome but wanted to save a vinyl tree.) The wood-grain option featured prominently in promotional photos for the cars—unlike the arguably tackier vinyl top. The wood-grain package reappeared for both the Dodge and the Plymouth in the 1979 and 1980 model years. By the second year of the new decade, however, it was gone. Instead, there was a new Euro-Sedan package with blackout trim and a stiffer suspension. The times, they were a-changin’. —Joe Lorio

Given the Suburban’s ample flanks, it was only a matter of time until someone within the GM empire began envisioning it as a canvas in need of some sweet ’70s expressionism. So when the seventh-generation ’Burban appeared in 1973 with vinyl wood-grain siding in place, it fit right in with the peaceful, easy feelings the nation was embracing. Viewed in retrospect in the case of the pictured Suburban, it’s essentially a world-class troll, the barely recognizable pattern taunting: “Ha! I’m not even trying to look like real wood—the grain doesn’t even match from panel to panel. I dare you to buy me!” Sadly, we couldn’t find any sales numbers indicating just how many Suburban buyers opted for the shelf-paper treatment, nor could we authoritatively nail down the exact date GM pulled it from the order books. We did find GM literature confirming it was still going strong in 1977, but after that, the trail went cold. For what it’s worth, the Blazer/Jimmy woodies remained in production to 1980. —Andrew Wendler

Those who fall somewhere between Baby Boomers and Gen Xers might think of the 1980s as a time when imports surged, when John Hughes movies gave teen angst and being young a new look, you got your mullet at Fantastic Sam’s, and you listened to U2 or Duran Duran on cassette while motoring along in your worldly Saab 900, Audi 5000, or BMW 3-series. But that was lost on an entirely different, older generation with different tastes and allegiances, for whom the Chrysler LeBaron and LeBaron Town & Country convertibles—including, oh yes, a woody version—appealed.

Built on Lee Iacocca’s gruff guarantees and the same modest front-wheel-drive K-car underpinnings that once saved the company and birthed the minivan as we know it, the 1983–1986 LeBaron Town & Country convertible was powered by a Mitsubishi-supplied 2.6-liter four-cylinder engine and a three-speed automatic transmission. The Town & Country’s soft ride was just what buyers expected, and the wood grain probably matched the picnic basket that this Lawrence Welk crowd might still have had in the pantry. Although these special-K convertibles were discontinued for 1987, the Toyota Solara arrived about a decade later (sans faux wood, of course) to give Baby Boomers with Kenny G CDs their own version of this experience. —Bengt Halvorson

Given the El Camino’s Spanish name, it would be logical to think the car/truck hybrid’s wood-panel package would be named something along the lines of La Madera. Unfortunately, logic wasn’t at play when Chevrolet named this special El Camino package “Estate.” Hell, we would have at least kept the Spanish theme going and named it La Finca. In Chevy’s mind, though, the El Camino Estate wasn’t for just any Joe Blow who needed a bed to haul stuff in. No, as the image above shows, Chevrolet created the El Camino Estate to appeal to the motorcycle-riding, adventure-seeking playboy who likes to be candid with his lady friends. Originally offered as an option package on both the El Camino Standard and Custom, the Estate package was later relegated to the Classic model (a trim that was introduced in 1974 as a replacement to the Custom). Alas, the little-known El Camino Estate’s five minutes of fame were all too short, as the package and its faux-wood trim weren’t revived for the fifth-generation El Camino. —Greg Fink

Many prewar and mid-century trucks featured wooden floors in their pickup beds, but this trend fell out of favor long before the Me Decade. Until, that is, the Dodge Li’l Red Express revived the concept with its extensive use of real wood. Not only were pine boards fitted to the bed of the truck, oak pieces decorated the tailgate and the flat parts of the Dodge’s bedsides. Rounding out the ostentatious look of the Li’l Red were chrome exhaust stacks, chrome slotted wheels, and gold-painted graphics. But this truck wasn’t just for show; a loophole in otherwise stifling EPA regulations meant that this Dodge’s special police-spec 360-cubic-inch V-8 could be sold without a catalytic converter. In a comparison test against the likes of a Chevrolet Corvette, a Pontiac Trans Am, a Porsche 924, and a Saab Turbo in Car and Driver’s November 1977 issue, we found that a Li’l Red could out-accelerate every sub-$15,000 vehicle on the market from zero to 100 mph, doing the trick in 19.9 seconds. Wood is good! (Or is it? The preproduction Li’l Red in our test came sans wood siding.)

Preceding the Li’l Red by a couple of years was the Dodge Warlock, an attempt to embrace the growing customization scene that was particularly notable in the van market at the time. The pinstriped Warlock’s factory-fitted wood, however, was limited to the sideboards that slotted into the top of the bedsides and increased the loading height. Also, an extremely rare 440-powered version of the Li’l Red wore black paint and Midnite Express lettering and barked even louder. —Rusty Blackwell

Since it was the flagship of the Mercury line at the time, it’s only fitting that the faux-grained vinyl gracing the sides of ’68 Park Lane was referred to as Yacht Paneling. Running wide from stem to stern, the wood-grain Di-Noc film—3M’s trademarked name for a vinyl wrap used by many auto manufacturers—on the Park Lane was touted as a practical feature that “protects your vehicle from dings and scratches while minimizing unsightly paint chips.” Sure. True or otherwise, it certainly gave some credence to the sometimes derogatory term “land yacht.” The look was offered on both the convertible and the two-door hardtop for the 1968 model year; most Mercury authorities agree that somewhere between 10 and 50 of the 1112 Park Lane convertibles produced hit the showroom wearing the yacht-paneling vinyl. The Colony Park station wagon would soldier on with its vinyl wood grain intact, although the pattern was toned down to a less seafaring appearance. —Andrew Wendler

For most of the vehicles on this list, wood grain was little more than a style element. In the case of the Jeep Wagoneer, it added years to the model’s life. Introduced in 1963, the Wagoneer could be had with a little spear of wood grain starting around 1970; by mid-decade, Jeep was offering the full body-side slathering. It wasn’t until the midyear 1978 introduction of the Wagoneer Limited, however, that the concept fully flowered. Besides its wood-grain siding, the Limited would come to include leather-and-corduroy upholstered bucket seats, shag carpeting, air conditioning, aluminum wheels, and power everything. Renamed the Grand Wagoneer for 1984, it became so popular that all lesser models soon were dropped. The Grand Wagoneer went on to boast the highest customer demographics of any car sold by the Big Three. It would last through the 1991 model year, a testament to the original Brooks Stevens design—and the power of wood grain. As a postscript, Jeep offered a wood-sided version of its new ZJ Grand Cherokee for 1993, but the magic was gone, and it was dropped after just one year. —Joe Lorio

In 1984, Chrysler opened our eyes to a new segment of vehicle: the minivan. Not quite a van or a wagon, the minivan rode some road between the two body styles. While the tall seating position and sliding rear door screamed van, the original Plymouth Voyager and Dodge Caravan’s available faux-wood trim gave the front-wheel-drive duo a connection to the classic station wagons of yore. Wood meant luxury, so when Chrysler introduced the luxurious Town & Country minivan for the 1990 model year, it of course came equipped with standard exterior “wood” paneling. Chrysler then doubled down on the fad and brought the feature to its second-generation (1991–1995) minivan. Fortunately, the company completely rid its third-generation minivans of fake tree when they were introduced for the 1996 model year. —Greg Fink

Flush with cash, Americans flocked to dealer showrooms once automobile production resumed after World War II. Automakers were only too happy to hoover up that money, and one way to extract a little extra from well-heeled buyers was with prestigious wood-bodied models, which had an air of the landed gentry about them. At Ford, there was the wood-bodied station wagon, of course (although the Country Squire nameplate wouldn’t arrive until 1951), but new for ’46 was the Sportsman convertible. Sold also as a Mercury under the same name, the Sportsman was in both cases the most expensive offering. The Ford version cost $1982 in 1946, a whopping 25 percent more than the regular convertible. The Mercury was $2209, a fat $498 over its all-steel sibling. Even in the superheated immediate postwar market, very few found takers. By 1949, the Sportsman was dead, with the coming of the new postwar redesigns. We can’t help thinking, however, that Ford should have held on to that name; it sounds perfect for a sport-utility vehicle—a genre that in today’s marketplace has proved highly effective at extracting extra cash from buyers. —Joe Lorio

Black wood: It’s in the name, but strangely enough, it’s not actually on the truck. Lincoln originally showed a Blackwood concept at the 1999 Detroit auto show that featured real African wenge wood trim adorning the bed sides. But when the production model rolled around for 2002, the real stuff had been replaced by laminated plastic trim made to look like a close approximation. Based on the Lincoln Navigator SUV, itself based on the Ford F-150 pickup, the Blackwood was Lincoln’s first truck. Although bizarrely styled inside and out, it preceded the Cadillac Escalade EXT by a few months and was instrumental in creating the idea of a luxurious pickup truck that’s so commonplace today. A crew-cab body style with rear-wheel drive and a 5.4-liter V-8 was the only configuration, and the Blackwood was offered exclusively in black, natch. Truck buyers didn’t appreciate the short bed covered by a standard power-operated tonneau—basically a carpeted trunk of sorts—and luxury buyers weren’t really looking for a pickup truck in the first place, so sales did not meet expectations. Suffice it to say that the Blackwood was quickly dropped from the lineup, not even reaching the 2003 model year. Lincoln gave the pickup-truck game another go with the F-150–based Mark LT a few years later, but that didn’t go so well, either. Nowadays, Ford seems plenty happy selling $70,000 F-150s adorned with its own Blue Oval badge. —Joseph Capparella

If the purpose of wood-grain decorations on an automobile is to maximize grainy surface area, the forested editions of the two-door 1968 Chrysler Newport shared nearly equal credibility with their massive woody-wagon cousins. Marketed as part of Chrysler’s Success Sale, the $126 Sportsgrain option for two-door Newports was announced in the spring of 1968, marking the first time since the 1950 Town & Country that Mopar offered wood-grain sides on anything other than a station wagon.

Only 965 coupes and 175 convertibles were built wearing stick-on faux lumber, as opposed to the thousands of wood-sided Newport Town & Country wagons built that year. Sportsgrain returned for the 1969 redesign of the huge C-body Chrysler, but despite—or perhaps because of—the slimmer plankwork, the option was even less popular in the year of Woodstock. Go figure. —Rusty Blackwell