Cars that never made the light of day

[va1o]

Anyone else find it fascinating that some manufacturers have gone the full length to develop and build a car, yet it may never actually get to go on sale? Here's a few examples of production ready 'binned' models:

Rover R30

This would have been the 200/400 successor 10 years ago and have been built alongside the MINI, but it went when MG Rover collapsed, rumour has it BMW stole elements of the design for the E87 1-series

SEAT Tribu

SEATs finished version of the Audi Q3 and VW Tiguan, but scrapped at the last minute

Saab 9-5 Sportwagon

A handful of these actually got made, but it was too little too late and didn't quite reach the market

Be interested to hear of any others with similar fate

[va1o]

Didn't realise there were quite so many BMWs that fell into this category! The E30 pick up looks amusing

ajprice said:

Smart ForMore small 4x4 model. Based on the Mercedes GLK that didnt happen either at the time (Mercedes were short of money at the time and cutting back). Designed, developed, tested, killed just before the concept unveil at Frankfurt 2005, the test cars were crushed. Now we've got Qashqai, Juke, Mini Countryman etc. a small 4x4 Smart http://www.wrexham.com/news/cow-rampage-town-centr... have done just fine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Formore

That's quite an interesting find, remember reading about the ForMore a few years ago but nothing ever came of it. Mercedes did eventually release a GLK a couple of years ago based on the W204 C-Class chassis to take on the BMW X3 and Audi Q5 but its LHD only unfortunately so not for sale over here.

[va1o]

Chicane-UK said:

Corrado Cabrio! I don't care much for soft-tops but as a fan of the Corrado, it would have been fun to see more models.

That reminds me of this, another Karmann job