This is our seventh year choosing the eight cars that make us yearn for a trust fund and a huge garage. And it's safe to say this year's list of cars is the best ever. Of the 250-plus vehicles for sale on the American automotive market, we think these eight offer the greatest levels of affordable performance. The most bang for the buck, if you want to get cliche.
Last year, thanks to the introduction of the Subaru WRX STi, which costs $31,000 and is a staff favorite, a problem arose. Many thought we should hike up the award's traditional $30,000 price cap. After all, there's no doubt the STi delivers a remarkable level of performance for its sticker price.
But after much debate, we left the price cap at thirty grand because we felt a line must be drawn. If we raised the price cap to $32,000 for the STi, soon enough another great car would come that costs $34,000. So that year, we bump the cap to 35 grand. Then another car is introduced, and it costs...you get the idea. Next thing you know, the list is filled with a bunch of high-dollar iron like the BMW M3 and the new Lotus Elise, which is powered by the same 1.8-liter four-cylinder that motivates the Toyota Celica GT-S, a former 8 Great Ride. We'd sell our kid's eyeballs to own either one of these things, but the Lotus costs 40 thou and the M3 is more than 50.
Besides price, for a car to be considered for the award, it must be for sale in some volume in the contiguous United States and the carmaker must make a production spec unit available to us for track and chassis dyno testing. Last year, that last part kept the then-new Mazda RX-8 from the list. Mazda was simply unable to get us a production-grade car in time.
This year, the RX-8 made the cut, along with three other newbies, the Mazdaspeed Miata, MINI Cooper S Works and Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VIII RS. They join four repeat winners from last year's list, the Subaru WRX, Acura RSX Type-S, Dodge SRT-4, and Nissan 350Z. These are the cars we want to drive and tune.
On the following pages are full road tests of each. And for fun, we've photographed each car after the sun went down. Hope you enjoy the treatment, and congratulations to the winners. --Scott Oldham