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Why aren't there more 2x10 + 18 cabinets?

I'm talking about is the transient capability and time domain response
If that's what you're talking about then that's what you should say. A smaller driver with lower Mms will tend to have better transient response than a larger driver with higher Mms, but for the purpose of dispersion alone you should be crossing over from a large woofer to a small midrange below where poor transient response is a problem. That was probably part of the intent with the 18/210 configuration, but then they screwed it up by placing the tens side by side, so not only did they not have wider dispersion in the low mids from the tens than from the eighteen, they also introduced comb filtering at the upper end of the range of the tens.
 
Part of the reason for using 8" or 10" drivers in a non-textbook application is because of particular characteristics relating to voicing and how the drivers overdrive.

This is where science and art combine to make a solution that suits a player's real world desires.
 
Times change. Single drivers were more limited in their capabilities back then.

Edit: What I mean by this is that decades ago, it was not very common for a driver to "do everything" well. Generally what people want in a bass cab (and yes, I know, there's an enormous amount of variation to what people think makes a good sounding cab) is something that has good solid lows, strong and relatively even midrange without a ton of odd peaks and valleys, high sensitivity, and good power handling (both thermal and mechanical). The tradeoffs between these traits used to be more severe than they are now. You might design a driver with high excursion and very good lows, but its midrange and sensitivity might be kinda lousy. Getting a single driver type (as in, a cab containing only one or two of the same driver) to have everything you want in a good bass cab, while also being affordable was no easy task. That's why you used to see way more oddities like the Peavey 1810, 1820, 3620, etc. than you see now. And other unusual designs like folded horns and so forth.

Now that you can get low end excursion and a strong midrange out of a loud 2x12 or something like that, and get it relatively cheaply, there's less motivation to make things like the 1820.
 
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I am quite happy to have a small, light hifi neo cab.
Still, being of a certain age, I think about big stuff
that would have the rock & roll image.
Not that I want to go there (unless someone else is both buying and moving it),
I just day dream.
Yesterday I was looking around fleabay, just killing time...
and found a set of 4 EVM18Bs for 200 bucks.
WOW!
Huge amount of cone surface area for the bux.
What they lack in deep lows, they make up in loud.
 
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This is where science and art combine to make a solution that suits a player's real world desires.

I think a lot of "specification and test results" oriented folks tend to miss this point. When I first started out in engineering I used to think science, physics and math were the tools that carried the day and everything else was just smoke and mirrors.

The longer I worked in the profession the more I realized that engineering tools technical expertise are only part of the game. Great engineering has an equal measure of creative thinking, intuition, experience, perspective and context underpinning the game changing simple and elegant answers. The most impressive and innovative products I've seen can usually trace their roots back to as much art as science.
 
I think a lot of "specification and test results" oriented folks tend to miss this point. When I first started out in engineering I used to think science, physics and math were the tools that carried the day and everything else was just smoke and mirrors.

The longer I worked in the profession the more I realized that engineering tools technical expertise are only part of the game. Great engineering has an equal measure of creative thinking, intuition, experience, perspective and context underpinning the game changing simple and elegant answers. The most impressive and innovative products I've seen can usually trace their roots back to as much art as science.
Well, someone has to have an idea before there's anything to test.
 
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I am quite happy to have a small, light hifi neo cab.
Still, being of a certain age, I think about big stuff
that would have the rock & roll image.
Not that I want to go there (unless someone else is both buying and moving it),
I just day dream.
Yesterday I was looking around fleabay, just killing time...
and found a set of 4 EVM18Bs for 200 bucks.
WOW!
Huge amount of cone surface area for the bux.
What they lack in deep lows, they make up in loud.
Score!
I'll eventually have to just go ahead and get me one of these, since, because of published specs alone, I've been fawning over them in a number of posts here lately.
They do not lack deep lows in the appropriate box (and a wide range of possible tunings - sealed is also an option), but mechanical power handling is reduced accordingly. See one of my aforementioned posts:
SWR BigBen replacement woofer
At 99dB @1W@1m, net of a significant hi-mid/lo-treble bump, you could get away with little power as you mentioned, and have a one-way, crossoverless solution with plenty of highs and beautifully voiced for bass guitar according to every TBer familiar with the woofer. (I also wouldn't be surprised if they told me it's a killer six-string guitar speaker.) Tradeoffs are size, weight, headroom and dispersion of course. Also, since it's a long-discontinued and likely hard to repair driver it would have to be treated with the respect due to its age.
If I had two of these I'd look into having two differently-shaped boxes made (same internal volume and tuning though), the bottom one with a slanted baffle pointing the driver towards my head and the top one taller above the driver cutout to compensate for the necessarily smaller footprint. (This vertical crossfiring stack design is Bill Fitzmaurice's idea IIRC.)
 
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Back in the day, Peavey made a single cabinet that featured two 10" Scorpion speakers and an 18" Black Widow woofer. I thought the cabinet sounded sweet. Wonder why this didn't take off, or for that matter, 18" speakers in general.

There are some interesting neodymium 18" woofers on the market today, which can do things that yesteryear's 18's couldn't, at least not without a prohibitive weight penalty.

Amplifier technology is advancing even more rapidly. As watts-per-pound and in some cases watts-per-dollar go up, relatively power-hungry cabs that go fairly deep start to become more feasible.

All we'd need to set the stage for 18's to make a comeback would be, luthiers creating basses tuned lower than low-B. Oh wait...
 
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I seem to recall having read an interview with Dana Strum, back at the height of Slaughter’s popularity, in which he bragged about how he got his tone: 1820 cabs, flatwound strings, and felt picks. “It’s thunderous, and it’s loud.” And I was thinking, “Ewww.”

And of course, when he produced Firehouse’s debut album, he made their bass player sound just like him. Again, “Ewww.”

Having said that, the guy I sold my 1001RB to runs it through an 1820, and I gotta say it sounds pretty sweet. That’s it, stage right.

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I purchased four Peavey 1820's a couple of months ago for a sweet deal at $250 a pair. I bought them with the intention of using the 18s as subs in a couple of vehicles since I once again caught that obnoxious predilection for listening to really loud music in my vehicles.
But a couple of months ago a family tragedy changed the entire game plan that I had laid out, so I started to build the absolutely stupidest home theatre surround system I could with the least amount of cash so my almost ready to move out kids and I could have a movie night every week for the next three or four months.
I came up with the (hopefully) brilliant plan to use the 1820s with some 22A CDs using 10μF NP capacitors as a high pass filter. I am using the 18s as a sub for each of the four corners with the 10s and tweeters as the front and surround speakers so each channel has it's own dedicated sub and built-in bookshelf speaker.
And for the centre channel I have a choice of a pair of PA15s, a pair of TLS2X, or a 410TXF bass cabinet.
I figure it's going to be hilarious when I add the Audio Control Epicenter from one of the car stereo systems, especially seeing as we live on a boggy area and I will be trying different stands, mounts, maybe even literally strapping them to the concrete floor to find out what method transfers the most sound to the ground.
Maybe it sounds good, maybe it does not. Who cares? I want to have some fun with the kids before we have to move this summer. I am just searching Craigslist for an AV receiver with full pre-out functionality so I can try out my new vintage Proton amplifier for the front main speakers and let her rip. And when we move out, I can just stuff some vehicles with sound like I had originally intended.
Did not intend to ramble on, but I was reading this thread and wondered why more people don't take advantage of seemingly "obsolete" speakers that can be bought for next to nothing. Check the specs on the individual drivers in an old pair of bargain speakers. For myself, I first check the efficiency, frequency response & for bass drivers, a decent Xmax number, then the RMS power rating, ohms, etc.