10 Cars We're Sad Got Canned

10. Audi Quattro Concept

Audi has decided to can the Quattro concept and instead give the badge to a high-riding, high-powered Q2 coupe-crossover. That’s bad enough, but made worse by how cool a new Quattro could’ve been. Shorter and lighter than an RS5 but packing the same 444bhp punch, it’d have been a modern (pricey) road-rally hero like the good old days when Scoobies and Evos were cool.

9. BMW M3 Touring

The E46 BMW M3 is one of the company’s finest efforts ever, but you have to have it as a two door coupe. It’s a written rule of petrolheads that estate performance cars are cooler than saloons and coupes because they’re less 'in-yer-face' and more practical. So, a 3.2-litre straight-six wagon with those flared wheelarches had serious potential. Imagine a CSL version too...

8. Mini Rocketman

Mini said it's not going to build the Rocketman because of crash legislation, and the cost of engineering their way around making their tiny car safe. Right. So Toyota’s iQ manages, as does the Smart, but BMW-bankrolled Mini can’t? Stupid really, given that despite the endless brand dilution, terrible TV adverts and sickening commonality of Minis, they’re still desirable and fairly cool. A proper micro-Mini would be of the times, just as sought-after, and well, mini. Shame it’ll never see the light of day.

7. Lexus LFA Roadster

It look Lexus seven years to make the LFA concept a road car, so to keep us interested, in 2008 it showed off an open-top version. Once Lexus nailed the road-going coupe, they created just one roadster version, but opted not to build any more to instead look at funding a new Toyota Supra. That’s exciting, but we’re just a tad sad that the world’s best-sounding engine didn’t find a home in more than one roofless car.

6. Audi R8 V12 TDi

The Audi R8 V8 is seriously good, and the V10 is probably even better unless you’re truly anal about your handling balance. So would a 6.0-litre V12 version be even better – even if it drank diesel? We’ll never know, because Audi got cold feet about offering the world’s first ever diesel supercar, and dropped the plan to focus on electric E-tron models. Maybe you’re glad supercars have remained a strictly petrol business, but if you crave oil-burning mental motors then take heart from the fact the same 700lb ft engine ended up in a Q7. Vorsprung Durch LSD-fuelled planning meetings.

5. VW Golf GTi W12-650

Okay, so VW plumbed a 650bhp Bentley Continental GT engine into the back of a hot hatch to celebrate the 2007 GTi Worthesee Festival, not because it actually planned to build it. But Nissan has managed to flog a supercar engine in a pumped-up supermini: a Juke-R will set you back a cool £400,000. Maybe if VW had waved the GTi W12-650 under rich Arabian buyers noses instead of Golf fanboys in Austria, we could’ve seen a few more of these widebody monsters.

4. Honda NSX

If you like the Lexus LFA, it’s tragic just how close we came to having another front-engined, manic-revving V10 coupe from Japan. And we came so close. Spy shots of completed cars were rife from the Nurburgring. But, the 2008 financial meltdown gave Honda such a scare it canned the almost-ready NSX. And the S2000. The car went on to race in Japan’s Super GT series with a V8 as the HSV-10, but we’re still raw from the death of the road car. One crumb of comfort is a new NSX will arrive at long last in 2015, though predictably, it’s a hybrid all-wheel-drive contraption.

3. Lamborghini Estoque

About as cool as four doors can ever get, the Estoque was another recession victim, and just as Audi got flush enough to fund a third Lambo model; Audi woke up to the notion that big markets like China and Russia really like heavy, bloated, vulgar SUVs more instead. So, we’ve got a godawful Bentley EXP 9F coming (rightly included in Alex’s 10 munter cars countdown) and the Aventador-on-stilts Urus instead of the Mafia-dream machine that is the Estoque. Pity.

2. Ford Fiesta RS

There’s a great pattern with fast Fords. They’re awesome, so lots of us buy them. That makes them common, which makes them depreciate, so more of us can buy them later down the line. Check out the Mk1 Focus RS: one of the best hot hatches ever, and down to £6k! So a smaller, chuckable RallyeSport with the same handling genius and mass-market appeal is a no-brainer, yeah? I thought so too, but Ford showed us this concept and then never followed it up with a showroom model. What the hell, guys? At least we got the ST version...

1. Devon GTX

I was properly gutted when the recession killed off Scott Devon’s LA-based Devon GTX. For one thing, it looked like it’d be the end of the American supercar too, as at that point Chrysler was still looking to sell off the Viper name in order to pay the bills. In case you don’t know the Devon GTX shared a Viper base and 8.4-litre V10, but had the wick turned up to 650bhp, plus a gorgeous two-tone body and bespoke interior accessed by butterfly doors. The GTX set a new lap record for road cars at Laguna Seca, and was set for an attempt on the Nurburgring crown too, but the credit crunch killed off Devon Motorworks – like so many other great projects and dreams, the bloody thing – and the prototype was sold off to a lucky collector. A gorgeous, well set-up, promising motor car was cut down before its time.

To cheer myself up, I’m off to try and beat its 1:35.07 record at Laguna Seca. Where’s my Xbox controller?

Any we've missed? Set us straight in the comments below.