For decades Cadillac never built a station wagon, yet there are a surprising number of them around.

For reasons that were never totally clear, the Cadillac division of General Motors for most of its history had a strict policy of staying out of the station wagon market. Yet, as Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) noted in Jurassic Park, life finds a way. While Cadillac wagons were never built in any great number, they were produced in endless variety and by every kind of third-party supplier, from neighborhood body shops to the country’s finest coachbuilders. Indeed, an entire book could be produced on the subject of Cadillac station wagons. This is just a quick look from 10,000 feet.

Coachcraft of Hollywood certainly wasn’t the first company to produce a Cadillac wagon, but it was widely known for its work in that department, building wagons and a variety of custom Cadillacs for entertainers and other wealthy clients. Reportedly, Strother MacMinn (1950 model shown here) and Philip Wright were among the noted designers who performed the styling work on these customs.

Milwaukee industrial designer Brooks Stevens created this one-off 1953 Cadillac station wagon with a distinctive reverse-slope rear pillar. To our knowledge, neither the body supplier nor the client were ever disclosed.  Wagons could be built on the standard Cadillac passenger car platform or on the carmaker’s extended-length professional car chassis intended for hearses and ambulances. In fact, some Cadillac wagons were based on professional car body shells.

The queen of Cadillac wagons, if you will, might be the 1959 Broadmoor Skyview above, produced in a series of six (eight total) by Superior Coach for the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Nearly 21 feet long and designed for sightseeing tours, the Skyview featured four-row seating for 12 and a series of three fixed skylights that ran the length of the roof. The Broadmoor operated a series of custom-built Cadillac wagons over the years, some created by Hess & Eisenhardt, another noted wagon constructor.

Reportedly, Traditional Coachworks of Chatsworth, California built just 11 of these 1976 Fleetwood Castilian wagons (above and lead photo), but they turn up often enough on the collector car market to make us wonder if maybe there aren’t more of them. Note the brushed metal C pillar and the one-piece, swing-up tailgate not shared with any GM production vehicle. Traditional also produced the Castilian’s sibling, the Cadillac Mirage pickup. (See our feature on Cadillac pickups here.)

In 2010, the  Cadillac division finally reversed its policy and offered a production station wagon, the CTS, followed in 2011 by a CTS-V high-performance version sporting a 556-hp supercharged V8 (below). The wagons were not big sellers and when the CTS platform was redesigned for 2014, they were dropped. Recently, Cadillac officials have suggested that a wagon based on the current CT5 sedan could be introduced. But given the supremacy of SUVs and crossovers in the U.S. vehicle market these days, we wouldn’t bet on it.