Say what you will about the state of the world at this very moment, and all of its complexity and idiocy and seemingly intractable conflicts, but there is one silver –or at least pewter – lining: enough time has passed so a lot more JDM cars are eligible for importation into America. Mostly, we’ve seen Americans take advantage of this buy buying small, useful Kei-class trucks, as we’ve reported about here before, with all the associated dramas, but sometimes you do see other, non-Kei stuff. I mean, I myself drive a non-Kei Nissan Pao, and just the other day I saw this remarkable beast on the road: a first-gen Honda StepWGN.
Yes, that’s the right spelling; way back in 1996 Honda was predicting the coming rage in internet application naming (think Tumblr, Qzzr, Scribd, Grindr, etc.) by getting rid of those heavy, efficiency-killing vowels in the name. This was when internet access still was happening via free AOL CDs and what we now call “apps” we still called “programs” or “applications” and they came on 3.5″ disks.
The StepWGN (and it seems Honda likes the all-caps for the WGN part) is much larger than a Kei-class car and has an engine over three times the size of the Kei’s 660cc maximum, a full 2-liter engine. This is a real minivan, and is also quite a clever design. It’s very boxy and tall, with a realtively small footprint but still able to seat eight people. That’s two full bridge teams!
The van has just one sliding door on the passenger side, leaving the driver’s side looking clean and only penetrable by the driver’s door. Overall, it’s a real packaging triumph for the 1.5-box style, a very space-maximizing sort of design. Also, I kind of like the plastic roof rails, for some reason.
The StepWGN was targeted, unashamedly, at Japanese families, and commercials in the late ’90s-era often had this appealing crudely animated, kid-like style. Like this one reinforcing the storkogenesis model of human reproduction:
…or this one where an animated elephant snorts up and then expels a whole family via its trunk:
…or this one, involving a family being swallowed by a whale:
Now that I think about it, Honda really seemed to like putting families in grave danger from wildlife in these ads. Whatever sells vans, I guess, even if its fear of being swallowed by massive mammals?
This one is really, really distilled down to just a crayon rendering of the StepWGN name:
Finally, we get this glimpse into Honda’s overarching cosmology, where the whole universe is just one of the wheels of The Great Universal StepWGN that defines our entire physical reality:
I mean, I understand this about as well as I do String Theory, so maybe I’ll become a believer in The Great StepWGN?
Jason, I see the appeal to you. This is almost all tail light and I too do like that. Those lights almost look like structural elements, maybe in lieu of C-pillars. You should do a deep dive on load bearing tail lights!
Frankly I understand string theory better than I do the math on this story. Really string theory is simple but also totally wrong. I am pondering the Autopian Theory of Publication though. Two Great Intelligent and Humorous writers escaping a dogmatic authority management to start their own business. Yet what made them best was humor and Monty Python like humor. Sure we need the hard facts but we have the good hard facts writers but we seem to be losing the core material that made DT and JT the great draw we loved when they worked at the other site. Guys don’t become the site you left to be free that is failing. Stick too being you.
I think one of the more remarkable points is that they were able to license a Beatles song for the commercials.
Maybe they can amortize the cost over time? …because they still use it on the latest Step WGN ads.
Swap the Honda H logo for a VW logo and you’ll have a DubStepWGN.
The back of that has some real Volvo WGN vibes.
Google up some Mitsubishi wagons.. those are doppelgangers to Volvo wagons on the 90s-00s.
Spotting JDM Hondas from this era is always fun. Just this past week I’ve seen 2 separate Z Turbos which of course led me on a deep dive into all the models Honda made that we never got. StepWGN is pretty rad.
Wait ’til you see the Z commercials – ZZ Top’s finest moment, IMHO
“Hi, this is my stepWGN, I’ve never met my real WGN”
+1 broken homes
How does one have a 1.5-box design? Isn’t half a box still just a box?
Unless you’re slicing the box across the diagonal, at which point it turns into a pyramid? But I don’t see any pyramids on this van.
Yeah, but, nah, but, yeah… that’s where the string theory bit comes in.
You know why they spell Froot Loops F-R-O-O-T? Because there’s no actual fruit in them. Wonder what that says about a company the spells wagon, WGN?
Every time a product like that says “made with real fruit,” I imagine someone eating an apple near a conveyor belt, watching the sugared corn go by.
Fruit by association, love it.
Didn’t think I’d be reinstalling Katamari Damacy today, but that’s why I come here. Treat yourself to the introduction movie, and that’s all I’m gonna say.
Da daaaaaaa dadadadadada da da dada da da da… great now that’s going to be stuck in my head. 🙂
Oh man. That’s a great van, and those are great ads.
And here I thought that the StepWGN was a tribute to Tom Skilling. Oh yeah, it’s not THAT WGN.
That’s a name I never expected to see on here. Tom Skilling was my hero as a young, meteorology-loving kid. It was awesome how he explained what was going on rather than just telling you it was going to rain.
And you know who is brother is right? Look up Enron.
OH MY! Now that was a very different career path…
Hopefully the StepWGN doesn’t get stuck…
Vanity plate:
WTRUDN
Or JSTSTEP