I think the original article that Gary posted is fair enough as far as the post WW11 motor driven vehicles are concerned but it doesn't come anywhere near a history of the type before that, and back into the horse drawn age.
The term "brake" always applied to passenger carrying wagons although these could vary in seat numbers, weight carrying capacity and the number of horses used. As a boy in Ireland I used to help prepare a two horse shooting brake that carried twelve people. It hadn't been used for its original purpose since the Muckross Estate passed from private (and sporting) hands into State ownership.
When I knew it, it was used to carry hotel guests into and through Killarney town and up to the Gap of Dunloe. Other vehicles in the cart shed were termed the wagonette and the side car which latter would be referred to as a jaunting car by what John the coachman called "ingorant people". It was a real thrill to bull up the brake, the horses and their tack, a grand sight when they all moved off. So a shooting brake was a good sized version of a wagon, big enough to take six or eight Guns, a few ladies, guns, and possibly cartridges. My one had a canvas roof and detachable canvas sides that were more ornament than use; if you object to getting rained on in Ireland you've come to the wrong place.
A horse drawn "car" at least in Ireland was always a small vehicle drawn by a single horse or pony. I'd take a station wagon to be a bit smaller than a shooting brake, designed as they were to carry a few passengers and their luggage across town. Might be two horses but usually just one (depending on terrain).
In Scotland many years later I saw garrons being used to take deer off the hill, an equally delightful experience, that mixed the pleasures of being around horses with life in the shooting field.
Anyway, I think this points up that the mechanical men have taken these bits of nomenclature that once held precise meanings and scattered them all round the factory.
Ingorant people.
Last edited by eugene molloy; 08/12/15 04:03 PM.
