I am always irritated to read about all those great cars that are being sold -- or will be sold -- in Europe that we won't get here. Some of them are little, and we all know that little cars won't sell here (don't tell Honda about the Fit or Nissan about the Versa). And some of them are hatches, and we also all know that hatches don't sell here (don't tell BMW about the MINI or VW about the Golf GTI and Rabbit).

So what is new in Europe that we won't get here? Here are some selections, plus some that we will get here.

I'm not sure where to put the upcoming new Golf. Since it took so long for the Golf edition 5 to get here as the Rabbit, I'm not sure how to predict the arrival of the next generation. The reason for that is that the next one is being hurried up in Europe because the current generation car is way too expensive to build. Apparently somehow during development, the engineers got the upper hand over the accountants. The Golf is a best seller in Europe and is the benchmark for many other manufacturers when they design new hatches. The former president of Renault even said that VW could command $2000 more for the Golf than the equivalent Renault because it was a "Golf" and that much better than the Renault.

The problems aren't necessarily because the car has expensive contains parts, it is because the car is difficult to build so it has a very long construction time. Also because of the difficulty in building the car, there are more build errors which then need to be fixed. VW insists that the new version will be as good or better than the current one, just easier to build.

That said, perhaps us poor slobs in the U.S. will get the new version sooner rather than. Remember we just got the current model that has been on the roads of Europe for years. Of course, part of the delay is that the build tooling must be put in place in Germany first for the European market, then in Mexico for us.

From the other direction, it has been no secret that Lexus is planning an M3 competitor, the Lexus IS-F. It should be here early next year. But did you know that Toyota also plans a coupe and convertible for the IS. That may well arrive next year as well, though later than the IS-F.

A no surprise introduction will be the coupe version of the Rolls convertible. That, of course, will come to the U.S. But there are two items of Rolls news that aren't as well known. Rolls wants a smaller than Phantom sedan for two reasons. The first is that they want to compete more directly with the Bentley Continental Flying Spur. The even more important reason is that European customers have complained that the current Phantom is just too big for European cities. The new sedan will be built off the next generation BMW 7-series platform. Another side note about Roll-Royce is that China is now the third largest market for their cars. Of course the U.S. is first, but number two wasn't mentioned. Rolls had a 60% sales increase in 2006 in China (perhaps that was just three or four more cars), but one of those was a very special $2 million Phantom. It is said that the Chinese really like to make their Phantoms special -- and there are enough rich Chinese to do that -- even in an egalitarian Communist country.

BMW plans to introduce a 1-series convertible in Europe next summer. Alas, we won't get it until 2009 at the earliest. It should be shown in Geneva in March and on sale in summer. Pricing should be between the MINI convertible and 3-series convertible.

Fiat has been a spectacular success recently. That mostly is due to the huge money GM spent not to buy Fiat. Remember that GM paid $2.4 billion not to buy Fiat in 2005. The money has been well spent on new models that we will never see here in the U.S. They really are good looking and almost all get great mileage. But Fiat has a horrible reputation in the U.S. -- still. That and all these cars are relatively low powered and small. Look for the Alfa Romeo division to try to set up business here in a few years though.

While European emissions and safety standards now are very similar to ours here, setting up a distribution organization for a new car to sell in volume is really difficult -- and expensive. That's why you won't see a Fiat here -- or a Renault or Peugeot for that matter.

An interesting development effort going on at BMW and VW is for a city car. Apparently manufacturers are trying to find any little niche to fill these days. With the lack of success for the Smart, one wonders why other manufacturers think they need a city car. VW's effort is at the point of showing a concept car at the Frankfurt show in September. BMW has just approved the start of early engineering work.

One model not likely to show up here is the Porsche "Climate Pig" Cayenne. The optional equipment from Greenpeace is a bright pink paint job, pig snout, and pink ears. One might argue that it makes the ugly Cayenne look better. It's pretty certain you won't find this one in your Porsche dealer's showroom here -- or even in Europe for that matter.

A real car that won't get here soon is a VW Golf (Rabbit) station wagon with a 2-liter diesel engine. It isn't very fast at 0-60 mi/hr in 9.8 seconds. Regardless that diesel is now priced higher than premium gasoline (that probably won't last too long), the average mileage is 50.4 miles/gallon. This car is a foot longer than the regular rabbit and can hold 55 cubic feet of stuff with the rear seats folded down. This is a really practical car, but alas, won't place very high on the "not a refrigerator" scale. It would really be interesting to compare this car with a Toyota Prius in the real world. The VW certainly can carry more, but I wonder how the fuel economy would compare.

Or how about another wagon we won't see here, at least it doesn't seem likely soon, is a BMW 335 wagon. Oh, it's here already? No. This is a 335d, not a 335i. This one accelerates to 60 mi/hr in 6.1 seconds. It is much higher on the "not a refrigerator" scale than the VW, holds more, and still gets 38 miles per gallon average. Is that impressive?

Another possibility for BMW would be to bring in another Alpina. This time try for the other end of the prestige scale than the current Alpina 7-series. Alpina sells a superb 3-series, the D3. It is based on the 320d sedan. That means that it is only slightly slower than the 335d in the previous paragraph, but gets over 40 miles per gallon. Note that this one has enough power to get it to 147 miles per hour. This is a car that has a range over 500 miles. Okay, if a diesel isn't in your plans, maybe Alpina's other 3-series might be. It is the B3 and will run with the new M3. Oh, yeah, we won't see that here either.

One older car that never made it here is the previous generation Maserati Quattroporte which was sold from 1994 to 2001. It really is sexy looking as it was styled by Marcello Gandini. Maserati was broke at the time, so it didn't have a lot of money to develop the car, but nevertheless it was positioned against the 7-series and S-class sedans. Supposedly it was a good driver and could accelerate to 60 mi/hr in 5.9 seconds. Alas, Autocar was quoted as saying that "there were enough rough-road squeaks in the cabin to drown out a litter of kittens." Ooh. Maybe that's why it never made it here.

Two really well selling cars that we won't see in the U.S. are the Ford Focus and Ford Mondeo. The closest we get to the latter is seeing it in the latest James Bond film. Both cars have gotten very high ratings in Europe, but Ford refuses to bring them here. We get a Focus that is two generations earlier than the current one in Europe and the closest we will get to the Mondeo is the upcoming Volvo S60 which is on the same platform. Suggestion to Ford: If you can't bring the Mondeo to the U.S. and sell it as a Ford at a low enough price, put a Mercury badge on it. Remember the Merkur? Oops, maybe we do remember the Merkur! But if you managed to do it right this time...