9 Cars We’re Sad Died In 2025

As is tradition when a year winds to a close, it’s time for us to mourn our favourite cars that didn’t live to see the next one. From sports cars to hot hatches and rapid estates to SUVs, and whether they were dropped in Europe or across the whole world, it’s time to break out the sombre piano music and black-and-white montage as we celebrate the lives of these nine cars that didn’t make it to the end of 2025.

Porsche 718

The Porsche 718 Cayman and Boxster twins had a good run, launching back in 2016. Though they arrived somewhat marred by underwhelming four-cylinder turbo engines, some nat-asp flat-six goodness soon found its way back to the duo, first in the GT4 and Spyder versions and then the more attainable GTS 4.0. Then came the outrageous RS derivatives, which felt like the first time the Boxster and Cayman twins had been allowed to swim in the deep end of the Porsche pool occupied by the 911.

But we’ve known for a while they were on borrowed time, and ordering came to an end in the autumn ahead of production winding up. There is a bit of good news for fans of mid-engined Porsche sports cars, though: although Porsche maintained for as long as possible that their incoming successors would go EV-only, the industry-wide downturn in EV demand has caused Stuttgart to reconsider, and petrol engines will live on in range-topping versions of the next-gen 718. Hooray!

Nissan GT-R

Archaeologists may have found depictions of the R35 Nissan GT-R in Cantabrian cave paintings, but 2025 was the year time finally ran out for The Ancient One. Granted, it had already disappeared from most markets a couple of years earlier, but it stuck around in Japan until just a few months ago, when the final GT-R rolled out of the Tochigi factory, just under 18 years after the first.

That’s a mighty impressive run for any car, but of course, the R35 wasn’t just any car. 18 years of rapidly accelerating automotive development, combined with its glacial approach to change, saw it go from a technological powerhouse and a cut-price stab at the era’s Ferraris and Lambos to a decidedly old-school, esoteric choice for those bold enough to spend ever-larger amounts of money on an ageing platform and a mass-market badge. But the R35 was always characterful – even more so in its old age – and always astonishing to drive. We’ll miss it, especially with nary a whiff of the R36 on the horizon any time soon.

Ford Focus

To live in a world without a Ford hatchback seems unthinkable, but that’s the world we’re living in right now. Unfriendly regulations and shifting consumer demand are leading to Ford abandoning small combustion cars altogether in Europe, and in November, the Focus followed the Fiesta into the history books. Launched in 1997, the original Focus represented Ford ripping up the rulebook after the Escort became bloated, stodgy and bland in its old age – a slice of supermarket own-brand plain white bread on wheels. 

The first Focus, by comparison, was... a delicate, freshly-baked focaccia with bits of olive and sun-dried tomato? Okay, this metaphor is getting out of hand, but in its 27 years and four generations, the Focus proved that normal, attainable family cars could still look good and drive great, and it spawned some magnificent hot ones too, with the fourth-gen ST one of two final holdouts for the old-school, front-drive, manual hot hatch.

Honda Civic Type R (in Europe)

That other final holdout was the FL5 Honda Civic Type R, and this one really hurts. For a start, it barely felt like it had a chance to spread its wings, having only launched in 2022. But more pertinently, it was flipping epic, 25 years of Civic Type R development distilled into one phenomenal package that somehow channelled 325bhp through the front wheels in a precise, controllable manner.

£50k for a Honda Civic may have been a bitter pill for many to swallow, but one go in it would prove that it was as satisfying to drive as plenty of cars twice its price. Emissions regs have spelt its end in Europe with a rather subdued Ultimate Edition, but it lives on in markets like Japan and North America. If you do live somewhere where you can still buy one, we urge you to treasure it.

Lexus RC F

2024 spelt the end of the V8-powered Lexus RC F and LC500 in Europe, and both have now disappeared from the rest of the world. The RC F started out a decade ago as a rival to the contemporary BMW M4 and Mercedes C63 Coupe, and frankly, it never really cut the mustard, despite a lovely 5.0-litre nat-asp V8.

But in the intervening decade, two things happened. One, the German cars became more complicated and less characterful, and two, Lexus steadily honed the RC F, culminating in the lighter, faster and more hardcore Track, Takumi and Ultimate Editions. By the end of its life, the big Lexus lay in a happy sweet spot between big, lazy muscle car and hardcore sports car, defined by its glorious anachronism of a powerplant and its eagerness to waggle its tail like an overexcited Labrador. We spent a week with a last-of-the-line Ultimate Edition at the beginning of 2025, and came away properly in love.

Audi RS4

When it launched in 2018, the B9-generation Audi RS4 was far from a critical smash. It was a bit dull to drive, and worse still, it had ditched its forebear’s 4.2-litre buzzsaw of a V8 for a muted 2.9-litre twin-turbo V6. By the end of its life, though, the Competition and Edition 25 Years, erm, editions had sorted out many of the model’s flaws, imbuing it with a purpose and personality it had lacked originally. 

That Edition 25 Years not only celebrated a quarter-century since the original RS4 launched, but the end of the model as we know it: the petrol A4 has been usurped by the A5, and while an RS5 is on the way, it’s likely to be a plug-in hybrid. The A4 badge, meanwhile, will find its way onto an EV, and with Audi seemingly rowing back on electric performance car plans, we’re not sure there’ll even be another RS4. There definitely won’t be another one like this, though.

Volvo V90

It’s not just loud, snarly performance cars we like, y’know. We also appreciate the laid-back approach and earnest practicality of a big Volvo wagon, which is why it pains us that the big Volvo wagon as a whole is no more. The company may have briefly dropped estates in Britain a couple of years ago before quickly 180-ing on that decision, but this time, the bigger of its two current longroofs, the V90, is dead for good – and not just in the UK, but everywhere.

That applies to both the regular car and the jacked-up Cross Country version, and while you can still get the smaller V60, that likely won’t be the case for long. Why? It’s the usual suspect: crossovers. There’s simply more money to be made in selling pseudo-off-roaders than good old-fashioned estates these days, and a comparatively small company like Volvo doesn’t have the luxury of being able to do both. Unless society suddenly and collectively wakes up from its SUV-induced stupor (please), then the V90 is likely the last of its kind.

Ferrari Roma

The Ferrari Roma was the first front-engined V8 coupe Ferrari ever made. That may seem like an overly narrow superlative, but it’s evidence of what a comparatively simple thing it was in comparison to some of the other stuff that Maranello’s been cranking out of late. No hybrid assistance, no all-wheel drive, no weird pointy styling – just a pretty, fast grand tourer of the sort Ferrari’s always done so well.

The coupe was dropped in 2024, with the soft-top Roma Spider living on until this year. The good news is that it’s being replaced by the Amalfi, essentially a heavily facelifted version of the same car. It’s not a Ferrari that’s likely to get massive amounts of attention, and it’s nice to know that a company that’s cooking up a high-riding quad-motor EV and churning out bizarre imaginary NFT cars is still capable of old-school stuff like this.

Jaguar F-Pace

Jaguar kicked off its grand electric reinvention last year with a promo campaign and a dramatic concept car, which made very little impact and wasn’t discussed online in a particularly intense manner whatsoever. Gosh, we’ve already forgotten all about it.

Anyway, as part of that relaunch, it culled most of its models in 2024, and indeed all of them in Britain, but the F-Pace stuck around until this year in some markets (in fact, some sources suggest it might be built into early next year, but its time is basically up). From the day it launched nearly a decade ago, it’s been one of our favourite posh SUVs, especially the SVR version that paired JLR’s bruiser of a supercharged V8 with a seriously supple, agile chassis for a car of its size. If all goes to plan for the company, it’ll be Jag’s last combustion-powered car, too – a worthy enough farewell, we think.