The Unlucky Dozen: 12 Vehicles Dying Off In 2015

Even in a booming market for new cars and trucks, automakers have to cull their lineups of the old and the unsuccessful. Many of the 12 models going out of production in the 2015 model year were just poor fits for American buyers; a few had a brief level of success, but then lost the battle for attention and money. And a few were puzzles from the start, weird cars that seemed marked for extinction the moment they rolled onto an auto show stage. Click through to see our full list of the models that will soon be history's cult classics — or forgotten footnotes.

One of General Motors' modern tricks is to sell older versions of popular models only to rental fleets as a way to keep the resale value of the new stuff high. That said, thousands of people have bought Captivas as lightly-used, bargain SUVs — and will keep doing so even though its the last model year for the previous-gen Equinox.

For a company typically in tune with American tastes in all things automotive, Honda's Crosstour was an oddball from day one. The oblong hatch and high-end content made it less an Accord Wagon and more a '70s luxury throwback, almost as if Honda saw a huge market among fans of the old Saab 9000. Production has ended, but your local Honda dealer can still rustle one up if you want.

While the Ridgeline died late last year, Honda has vowed it will return to the unibody pickup truck market that has yet to be proven successful in the 21st century.

While small SUVs are booming, they are doing so as replacements for cars, not because of a sudden surge in people wanting to ford raging rivers and spend the weekends wenching out of mud bogs. That's why the Land Rover LR2 is dying away, in favor of the more suburban-friendly Land Rover Discovery Sport.

Part of the general paring back of the overgrown Mini lineup to focus on the traditional Cooper and Countryman, the slow-selling Coupe and Roadster were likely a step too far in Mini's previous strategy of micro-targeting its clientele with different models.

As it focuses on crossovers and more efficient models, the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo has long been on the chopping block. The axe has finally fallen, with Mitsubishi building a few Final Editions of the car once famous for going tire-to-tire with Subaru's WRX.

In honor of its last days on Nissan dealer lots, I'm leaving the capital "C" off the Nissan cube's name, part of the quirkiness that Nissan was hoping would spell huge sales. It wasn't that Americans didn't want a small, boxy crossover — the Kia Soul proves they do — but the asymetrical and unsporty cube was just too cool for any school.

The two-plus-seater Scion iQ was an experiment in whether there was any sizeable market in the United States for European-type city cars. The answer, as of now, is no: Such models don't get enough fuel economy to make up for their lack of interior room or acceleration, and while parking in a city can be tight, Americans prefer gargages to sacrifice like this.

Likely more of a breather than an ending, Toyota will stop production on the Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid ahead of the next-generation version of America's most popular green vehicle. With that new Prius expected to raise its efficiency, it's not clear just yet when Toyota might bring back the plug-in edition.

No car better proves the unpopularity of the wagon bodystyle than the Toyota Venza. Launched with great fanfare in 2008, Toyota refused to call the Venza an SUV, yet bristled at the idea it was a nicely done Camry wagon. That divide spilled into the market, where buyers chose to ignore it rather than answer the question for Toyota. Production ends in June.

Volkswagen is one of the few automakers still doing a healthy business in convertibles, but the Volkswagen Eos has fallen victim to changing corporate priorities and Americans' preferences for SUVs of all kinds over cars, regardless of whether they can fold their roofs away or not.