I've never seen such a level of disdain towards developers cancelling 3rd party projects on failing consoles.

The Dreamcast had far more and far higher profile cancellations without any of this uproar and in those cases, it was software on more powerful hardware being axed (Colin McRae 2.0) etc. So to have weaker hardware requiring additional work and resources on top of the low userbase, it doesn't really make any sense TO continue with the game.

Games canned on Dreamcast after lots of hype from developers:

Colin McRae 2.0 (enhanced improved version)
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver 2 (Lead platform)
Black and White
CastleVania: Resurrection (ironic title!)
Half Life (this was practically 100% finished!)

Anyone would think this was the first time a high profile title for a format was cancelled.

And if I had a time machine I would go back and rake them over coals too.  But I don't.  What we do have is the here and now and the big problem is that this "version" doesn't look like it ever existed.  They lied, lied outright to their fans and supporters.  They used the Wii U version to drum up hype and that was it.  It's a disgusting practice.  It having been done before doesn't make it any better.  

But why would you rake over those coals? This is the part I don't get. Developers don't go "LOL I hate Console X fans, lets tell them we're making a game then troll them!".

What proof is there that they lied? They said they had it running 2 years ago, they were probably referring to the alpha version they had. They said that the wii u could play the core of the game, and it can at 20 fps. If anything, the wii u got more hype out of project cars (not the other way around), since people were using project cars as an example of the wii u's techincal feats. I get that people would be annoyed with the cancellation, but at least these devs were honest and didn't bust out yet another third party flop with poor wii u performance

Most probably when they did that Wii U alpha version, it ran fine because Wii U was the 2nd most powerful platform available after PC and it outperformed the other two then planned, PS3 and XB360, then the game wasn't ready, meanwhile PS4 and XBOne came and PC power grew, so they decided to make PC, PS4 and XBOne the main platforms and they started adding features and refining graphics and physics, until eventually the game stopped running smoothly on XB360 and PS3 first, then on Wii U too, and it would have required specific fine customizations or some downgrades or both to run satifactorily on them. Ditching the oldest consoles was a no-brainer, they are very old and declining, cancelling Wii U version came more gradually, as the game became heavier eventually came the moment when while fine tuning would have required money, time and human and tech resources, that would have required achieving quite high sales on Wii U small user base to be recovered, and downgrading to the old running version would have cost less but made harm anyway, as every Wii U user owning also a PC and/or a PS4 or a XBOne would have ditched the inferior Wii U version, furtherly shrinking the already small potential user base.
As other said, if Wii U user base were larger, they'd have at least tried to make the best possible combination and compromise between fine tuning and downgrading and it would have sold enough to justify the effort even just to those that don't own a more powerful supported architecture.
Well, NX will most probably be powerful enough to run the future second best version after PC one of Project CARS, but as many of you might have already guessed, if Project CARS 2 won't be ready between NX launch and the launch of Sony and MS 9th gen consoles, its NX version will end this same way.

So what happened with the people who crowd funded this game wanting it on the WiiU?

after all the lies they've been telling(and their hate for nintendo users), im surprised so many people believe them that the game ''wont work'' due to hardware lol

If the ps4 and xbox one versions have framerate dips, is it really surprising that the wii u version performs at 20 fps? There's no conspiracy people, it's been known that the wii u's hardware is closest to the ps3/xbox 360 (also cancelled)

Truth fixed