Hello fellow GRMers! I've been on the quest to find the perfect family wagon for some time. As I converge on a solution, the search becomes more and more difficult. Now, "perfect" is subjective so I'll explain what it means to me.
But first, a bit of context.
I grew up on Japanese cars, lots of Hondas, but with a few Volvos thrown into the mix. In other words, practicality was the name of the game. That quickly changed about 4 years ago, when I started working a new job and met some cool folks who showed me that practicality and reliability doesn't always trump feel and performance. And also, it turned out that drifting is fun! This helped plant the seed of my RWD addiction.
As my mind was slowly molding around these concepts, suddenly our 2011 Outback -- which we bought new -- decided to take a dump after 5 years and 80k miles of perfect upkeep (surprise!) and Subaru wanted nothing to do with it. This allowed me to finally fulfill a longtime promise and bought the wife an R53 MINI. My only stipulation was that it had to be a manual because (1) the autos all grenade and (2) c'mon now, it's a Cooper S! The wife always thought they were cute so it was the perfect catalyst for her learning to drive stick which by the way she absolutely loves now. Plus, it's great for parking in the city. Reliability: not so great. We did a water pump within the first three weeks, a clutch not long after, then LCA bushings, PS lines, CV boot, etc. Now the knock sensor is dead and I have to strip half the car to get to it. 
But I digress.
In the end, it's totally worth it as it made her a lot more enthusiastic about driving.
Back to 2016. My daily was a sweet EBP Civic Si that I had bought from our very own David Wallens, wife had the R53, and I had my S2000 and 260Z toys. With the loss of the Outback, we needed a road trip and dog car for our two Dobermans. I was considering all sorts of SUVs and ended up finding a Toyota Sequoia nearby. We didn't like the Toyota so I pulled out my phone and lo and behold, a marvelous '04 V70R appears a couple miles away! Long story short, I'd always (thought I) wanted one and couldn't pass it up.
Another long story short, the V70R was crap. The ride was quite poor, and to make up for it, the handling was also... quite poor. Now I could've probably spent money on new dampers, solid mounting the front subframe, and fixing the exhaust leak but the unfortunate reality is that I'd spend close to what the car was worth to do so. If it were a spaceball, perhaps that relationship would've gone differently. I wanted to love that car so much. I really liked the styling, the seats were incredible, the motor was fantastically old-school and unique if not a bit sluggish to pick up revs. But there were just to many negatives in terms of actual design flaws, in my humble opinion.
We sold the Volvo after about two years of ownership and replaced it with an '09 X5 xDrive48i M-Sport (try saying that fast five times). Yes, I finally got an SUV. But hey, I was getting a trailer for the new race car and I was gonna tow. Right? Well... no. I ended up getting a steel-framed 24' enclosed trailer and decided that I'm better off renting a truck for the few times a year that I'll actually be towing the thing. Now, just before getting the X5, I found a fantastic deal on an E55 wagon. Oh god, I was so ready to throw down the cash right there and then but I got a hard veto from the lady. She was war-weary of my daily searches and said we're getting the X5 and that's that. I was a bit heartbroken but figured it wasn't meant to be.
Fast forward to a year ago when I decided that I was going to buy an E39 Touring and swap in an M5 drivetrain. That was the perfect wagon, I thought. I bought an '02 540iT with 240k on the clock and a month later, a cheap '03 M5 with 139k on it. Five minutes later, I came to the realization that my friends were right, I was never going to actually find the time to do this. I've been daily driving the M5 ever since and it's been an incredible daily, save the fuel efficiency. The 540iT was used as a dog hauler and family car until the timing chain guides went over Christmas. It's since been sold and is running again under its new owner!
