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I'm looking at the Space Wolves infantry box right now, and seeing what might possibly be the best designed army micro-faction in the game.

This box gives me 10 fully kitted dudes in terms of legs torsos and backpacks. Then it gives me every special weapon that can be taken for 3 different units (blood claws, grey Hunters, Wolf Guard.) then, on top of that, it gives me the extra heads and gubbinz to create the "space-wolfified versions of Scouts, Devastators and Assault Marines. Which is, obviously, an incentive for me to go but all those boxes. All this for...5 cents of plastic for GW? And thinking about it, with their profit margins GW's big issue has gotta be static product-if a unit has it's own box and falls out of flavor, that's a whole production die that's gonna be gathering dust and a ton of product they won't be moving.

So why the lack of combo-kits like this SW set? Why not even package every kit with models essentially just holding different equipment together?

For Space Marines, instead of having
Dreadnought Vendread Tac Squad Devastators Assault Marines Scouts Predator Land Raider etc etc etc

Why not have one dreadnought box, one base marine squad box, one box for everything with a rhino chassis, etc, and then for every satellite chapter give them a box like the Wolves have, which incentivizes buying other units by supplying bits to personalize them to your army? You could easily decide "okay the Ultramarines, the Cadians and the Khorne Baddies are the base suckers for those armies and we'll have single troop squad boxes for Catachans, Plague Marines, Blood Angels and the like that you can order online or special order from your stores, and all our shelves will be filled with the default factions."

This is like the lowest hanging fruit imaginable. I design these kinds of injection molding production lines for a living-it would be insanely easy to create a Rhino/Whirlwind/Razorback/Predator/The new vehicle thing kit that would allow them to never be out of a space marine vehicle kit ever. Of all the things that baffle me about GW this is the biggest one, because it's practically the only kind of money grab they haven't tried, and it's the one that would actually make people happier with them because it would basically mean more bits and stores would be able to stock everything.

I've commented on this before, for the same reasons.

They could sell base kits of 10 Space Marine bodies, and kits for Dev Squad arms, Spacewolf Troop parts, Command Squad parts, etc.
Terminator bodies, and kits for Chaos Termies, Assault Terms, Tactical Terms, SW Terms, etc.
Rhino body, and

It's what the sprues are already, and it's just packaging and marketing that dictates what goes in a box.

But, by selling the Predator as a Rhino with Pred parts, I can run either type. Magnetise, and leave off the turret.
If I want a Rhino, I buy something bigger, as the Rhino kit has no options. They get to sell more razorback kits. They do this the opposite way you suggest.

If I had 3 lists, 1 with 5 Rhinos, another with 5 Razorbacks, and 1 with 5 Predators, I need to get at least 10 kits.
Doing it your way, I get 5 body kits, and 15 option kits.
I know which I'd prefer to do, as I wouldn't have to splash out all at once. I could then move on to a list with 5 Whirlwinds, and just buy the turrets.

It's a nice idea, but isn't going to happen.

I thought the only special weapon was plasma guns?

It's about minimizing loss while maximizing gain. Kit sharing vehicles is just a matter of construction. Make the razorback gun build out of the predator turret, and the Whirlwind gun use the sponsons from the predator. You could create a package where only one kit could be made, and price it at 45 bucks.

My SW kit contains everything but flamer and melta I believe. Plasma guns and pistols, power weapon of two kinds and by extension frost weapon, bolters, pistols , chainswords, wolf banner, power fist, lightning claws.

That SW kit is a lot of parts.
If they sold those weapons as a kit of their own, would you buy more of just that sprue?