In 2025, a handful of long-lasting nameplates ended, but you’ll still see some of them… sort of.
The Toyota Supra, for example, will continue to be seen on race tracks; the Hyundai i30 Hatch is still available in the hot N guise; and the Mazda 6 will be replaced by a vehicle called 6e, just one letter less.
However, a handful of premium models are disappearing from the market for good: the Audi S8 and the Volvo S60 and V60 Cross Country.
Audi S8
Orders for the last remaining member of Audi’s full-size sedan range in Australia closed in July, although the sporty S8 remains available on the brand’s website at the time of writing.
The S8 was the last member of the A8 family to hit the Australian market. It combined the short wheelbase body style with a twin-turbo petrol V8 engine and featured some subtly sporty design elements.
Audi also closed orders for the A7 Sportback, although it lives on in Australia in hot twin-turbo V8-powered RS7 guise.
The upper end of Audi’s car range is undergoing change. There’s a new generation A6 Sedan and Avant, as well as the similarly sized electric A6 e-tron and A6 Avant e-tron, but none of these have been confirmed for Australia.
While these new models still have many years ahead of them in markets like Europe, the future of the A8 and S8 looks uncertain. They are scheduled to stop production by the end of 2026.
The current fourth-generation A8 and S8 entered production in late 2017, meaning they’re now almost a decade old, and no replacements have been announced yet, internal combustion engine or otherwise.
MORE: Audi Australia is selecting more cars from its increasingly SUV-heavy product range
Hyundai i30 hatchback
The Hyundai i30 nameplate remains in 2026, but if you want a hatchback you’ll have to step up to the high-performance i30 N hot hatch now, after production of the core i30 hatch range ended in December.
This marks the end of the regular i30 hatch models in Australia after almost 20 years, although they will continue to be produced in the Czech Republic for markets such as Europe.
Hyundai Australia switched to sourcing the regular i30 hatch from the Czech Republic last year after Korean production ended (the hot “N” already came from there).
While this allowed Hyundai to offer a much more efficient turbocharged 1.5-litre four-cylinder mild-hybrid petrol powertrain, it also drove up the price of importing the small estate model.
Perhaps for this reason, Hyundai chose to launch only the well-specified N Line and N Line Premium trim levels, although these were still $3,500 to $3,700 more expensive than the variants they replaced, while the range’s base price increased by $12,000.
Hyundai summarizes sales figures for the i30 Hatch and i30 Sedan in monthly VFACTS sales reports, although the latter – known elsewhere as the Avante or Elantra – is a larger vehicle based on a different platform. The company has previously confirmed that before the sourcing change, 80 percent of i30 sales were hatchbacks.
It’s unclear how much the switch to a more expensive model from the Czech Republic has hurt the i30 Hatch, although overall deliveries of the i30 fell 13.2 percent this year through November 30, it’s clear that some damage has been done.
MORE: Hyundai i30 Hatch canceled in Australia
Mazda 6
Technically, you’ll be able to get something called a Mazda 6 in local showrooms in 2026. But look closely and you’ll see a small “e” after the 6, and then if you look closely you’ll see that it’s a completely different vehicle.
Because the new Mazda 6e is a revised version of the Deepal L07, a Chinese electric liftback.
Mazda has been gradually phasing out its homegrown Mazda 6 worldwide, with Australia being one of the last markets where it was still sold. It’s still on the price lists in a few markets like Thailand and Vietnam, but given the fact that it went into production back in 2012, it’s definitely not going to be released again.
What finally killed the stylish sedan and wagon in Australia was Australian Design Rule 98/00, a new regulation requiring autonomous emergency braking (AEB) systems to meet certain technical requirements for all new vehicles for sale.
Although it had received numerous updates since 2012, the Mazda 6 was showing its age. Nevertheless, it prevailed, even when competing brands such as Ford, Kia and Subaru left the segment, although it lagged far behind the best-selling Toyota Camry for a long time and was overtaken by the BYD Seal in recent years.
Mazda now has a Seal competitor hitting local showrooms, but is leaving the midsize combustion engine market to a vanishing pool of competitors, most notably the Camry.
MORE: Mazda 6: Long-standing family sedan and station wagon canceled in Australia
Toyota Supra
The Toyota Supra nameplate remained dormant for 17 years before returning in 2019 in a new sports coupe co-developed with BMW.
In fact, one of the most iconic Japanese sports car nameplates found itself on a vehicle that was practically a hardtop BMW Z4 beneath its shapely shell. It was even built in Austria, not Japan.
It was a strange mix of Japanese and German in one entertaining package. Nissan would take a very different strategy with its rival Z, which launches here in 2023. Although the latest Z car also has an iconic name and a turbocharged six-cylinder engine, it is based on a revised version of the old 370Z platform.
This simpler, more conventional approach resulted in the Nissan overtaking the Toyota in the sales race, although the Supra made up ground that year.
Unfortunately, Toyota Australia announced in August that orders would be closed. Production of the GR Supra ends in 2026, but you’ll still see a lot of it in the future. That’s because this Austrian-built, German-sourced Japanese sports car will compete in the most Australian of competitions: Supercars.
This will make it a Supercars model alongside the Chevrolet Camaro that cannot be purchased by customers.
Toyota is currently on the rise in the sports car industry, establishing Gazoo Racing as a real brand, introducing the GR GT supercar and announcing the return of the Celica and MR2. So another generation of Supra is not out of the question, at least not with car fan Akio Toyoda as CEO.
Earlier this year, Toyota launched a Track Edition with retuned steering and suspension, but Australia missed out on the Final Edition, which delivers 320kW of power and 570Nm of torque – an increase of 35kW and 70Nm for Australian-market Supras, including the Track Edition.
MORE: Toyota Supra is dead in Australia, will live on in supercars
Volvo S60 and V60
After axing the S90 in 2019 and the V90 Cross Country in 2021, Volvo Car Australia has finally pulled the plug on the slow-selling S60 and V60 Cross Country models this year. The latter remains available in select markets abroad.
The jacked-up V60 Cross Country arrived here in 2021, replacing the regular V60 wagon. Its more SUV-like style should, in theory, have been more attractive in an SUV-hungry market like ours, but sales actually initially fell compared to the sleeker V60 it replaced, rising to 195 units in 2023 before falling again.
For comparison: Volvo sold more than twelve times as many XC60s as V60 Cross Country this year.
The S60 sold just as poorly as its station wagon sibling. Last year, Volvo Car Australia delivered just 153 examples each of the S60 and V60 Cross Country, meaning they sold even better than the oft-overlooked Alfa Romeo Giulia. That’s a far cry from the annual numbers of over 800 units seen with the first and second generations of the S60.
The S60 suffered from the ongoing shift away from sedans in the Australian market, which had already killed the flagship S90.
Over time, Volvo has become heavily dependent on its SUV models. And although a new car, the ES90, was brought onto the market this year, this liftback has an SUV-like high seating position.
While this new electric flagship can’t be directly compared to the departed V60 Cross Country, it remains to be seen whether it’s sufficiently SUV-like to appeal to buyers. Apparently that wasn’t the case with the V60 Cross Country.
MORE: The last Volvo station wagon in Australia has reached the end of the road
