Photograph by Brett Berk

For a subset of urbane, professional, country-house-owning, canine-loving, New York City homosexuals of a certain age, the contemporary upscale station wagon is extremely arousing—on par with, say, viewing Olympic men’s swimming. This is because these vehicles do everything our cohort requires. They can schlep a dog and two gentlemen to the mountains, lake, or beach in comfort and style. They are available (or come exclusively) with all-wheel drive, for added four-season security and not dying. Like the perfect pair of jeans, they can be dressed up for a gala event or dressed down so you won’t be singled out and murdered during a trip to rural Vermont. And they provide plenty of space for hauling charming and unexpected roadside finds, like a quartet of wooden Danish Modern dining-room chairs, a trio of patinated iron plant stands, or a pair of West Point cross-country runners who are lost and in need of a ride back to campus.

This attraction to wagons surprises other people—people who are not urbane, professional, country-house-owning, canine-loving, New York City homosexuals of a certain age. These people, who make up an overwhelming majority of the American population, believe that wagons are passé and frumpy. This is not that shocking. For the Boomers and Gen X–ers raised between 1949 and 1983 when the wagon was the suburban ideal, these cars seem like something that should be driven only by a brittle, middle-aged, chain-smoking matriarch, armed with a purse filled with Valium and divorce papers. And for the generation reared since then, when the minivan or S.U.V. was the maternal model, the wagon seems like an absurd anachronism, predating the rational era when mobile entertainment, adolescent isolation, and beverage holstering were our foremost travel needs. When we recently suggested to a New Jersey divorcée friend that she acquire a wagon as a family vehicle, she scowled and said, “I can just imagine dropping my sons at the Paramus Mall in that. I’d look like a sad, desperate crone.”

However, during a recent stint with the handsome, potent, capacious, Saddle-Brown-leather-lined, Mineral Grey Metallic–slathered, $56,000 2014 BMW 328i xDrive sports wagon pictured above, we wowed several members of the aforementioned velvet elite.

So what is it that makes this particular five door so very . . . everything? Maybe it’s the fact that while we gays love excess, we hate waste, and this wagon is the most efficiently packaged luxury carting option, wringing 33 miles out of a gallon of gas on the highway—or 45 (!) if you opt for the diesel model. Or perhaps it’s the way it out-Audis the Audi with its simple shape and pure un-inflected wagon-ness, out-Benzes the Mercedes with exquisite materials and a coddling (yet un-dowdy) cabin, downsizes from the largesse of the Caddy (we await hopefully the right-size ATS wagon), and beats the Volvo to market. Or maybe it’s just the sportiest among them and the most fun to drive.