Find affordable cars with 300+ horsepower that deliver serious performance witout breaking the bank, from sport coupes to high-powered hatchbacks and sedans.
While they aren’t fully relegated to the history books just yet, sporty two-door coupes and four-door sedans are becoming less common. For decades now, families have been moving from four-door cars to bigger, more spacious SUVs. Even worse, the coupes, sedans, and hatchbacks with a bit of power and an affordable price tag are becoming increasingly rare, as high-performance SUVs and pickup trucks flood the market and drive up costs. As a result, we’re left to lust after ultra-powerful and ultra-expensive sports cars that are often unattainable for the average buyer.
Thankfully, there are still a few powerful, relatively affordable cars out there within reach of the common consumer. What counts as powerful? Well, these days, with the weight associated with modern safety and comfort features, as well as the growing size of automobiles, it takes about 300 horsepower to be considered powerful. Sure, a coupe with somewhere between 200 and 250 horsepower is peppy, but 300-plus is where it’s really at. That level of power is where something graduates from being fun to being properly quick.Honda Civic Type R
The Civic Type R is Honda’s flagship performance vehicle. It’s powered by a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine that produces 315 horsepower and 310 lb-ft of torque. The four-cylinder engine is paired exclusively with a six-speed manual transmission which sends power to the front wheels, just like you’d expect from the legendary compact car. The Civic Type R offers an excellent driving experience, with more-than-adequate power for enthusiastic back-road driving, and impressive comfort too. The 2025 Civic Type R’s current starting price (2026 pricing hasn’t been released yet) is $47,090 (including $1,195 destination fee) and that includes basically all the equipment you could hope for.
Like most Hondas, the Type R doesn’t really do options packages, but it does come standard with driver aids like forward collision warning, lane departure warning, adaptive cruise control, blind-spot monitoring, and forward collision mitigation. In-cabin tech features include standard wireless smartphone connectivity, a 10.2-inch driver display, a 9-inch center touchscreen, wireless smartphone charging, and a data logging system to record your track times. The Type R uses pretty aggressive bucket seats, which is great if you love a bit of track time or canyon driving, but the seats aren’t heated. To get that sort of creature comfort, you’ll need to go with Type R’s sibling, the pricier Acura Integra Type S. Bargain hunters should look at rivals like the Hyundai Elantra N, but since the Elantra N produces just 276 horses, it didn’t make the cut for this particular list.
