Coldfire is what they would have, and did, make. By dropping a few problematic instructions they were able to use a more RISC-like approach and produce a nicer core. Most code just needs a recompile, or you can trap the old instructions and work around them.

I have a "Firebee", an Atari ST-like machine built around a 264mhz coldfire, and it's quite nice.

My understanding is that Coldfire got used in a lot of networking hardware, due in part to its network order endianness, and partially because Freescale put network hardware support into some of the cores.

But there is no continuing demand for Coldfire, really, so it has stalled, NXP never continued on with it and is going the ARM route now, like everyone else.