Though 'traditional' is a weird choice of words, since the history of the SUV only goes back a couple of decades. All of us who grew up earlier than that certainly remember the days when every other school carpool was in a station wagon.
I suspect that if the price of gas plus a carbon-use tax were ever to go up high enough to be comparable with what Europeans pay, it would put a brake on the market for over-heavy, over-large vehicles like SUVs, and lighter-weight styles like the station wagon might make a comeback.
Though I doubt that anything advertised as a luxury model of wagon is going to be particularly lightweight; that market seems to prefer conspicuous consumption.
And the traditional station wagons of past decades didn't have to have things like side airbags and reinforced frames, which I imagine adds some weight and bulk. At least, it certainly reduces visibility (= glass windows to see out of), which was one of the best things about station wagons (and, actually, vans) and is one of the worst about the current crop of SUVs and sedans. At least in the US, everyone now seems to want (or the car companies think we want) opaque windows like a drug dealer, or so their kids can watch videos in the dark instead of looking out the windows at all. So the image of the lord of the manor surveying his fields in tweeds with dogs and horses is probably a non-starter here.
Re 'shooting,' the default context in AE is indeed gun violence.
http://corpora.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/cgi-...
