Ok, here's some more info... I want something practical with a little power, maybe more than a little. An EVO is definitely in the running, my co-founder used to have one of those (until he crashed it into a wall at Infineon). Don't care about the badge but I do care that it has three seats/seat belts in the back.
Otherwise the STI and EVOs are both great cars. I personally prefer the Subaru interior though. As for coupes, the hyundai genesis definitely meets your mark for power. If you're going to tune/mod it yourself I might actually suggest the 4cyl turbo so you can easily replace the turbo & manifold/etc for easy power (vs a more involved setup of putting a turbo on the N/A I6)
The Audi A3 also has a pretty vibrant tuning community. A used Audi S4 definitely meets your power + seats criteria too.
If you're interested... here's a bunch of threads going on about this on Ford, Honda, Toyota, etc's social media pages. The problem now is I have about 10,000 opinions. Now what do I do?
This is a pretty interesting experiment in how social media can be used. We just posted a note on the FB pages of the manufacturers and our FB page.
1. Ultimately, there's a fairly finite universe of cars that meet your criteria, even if you consider the much wider used market. If you pick, say, an EVO MR, how do you pick who gets the prize when multiple people would have suggested it?
2. We ran into this a lot on our automotive board. Someone says 'I want RWD, MT, 4 doors, under $35k' and got a bunch of answers.
But cars are ultimately pretty personal - e.g. I hate VW's interiors, but many love them. Since you've got to go look at them personally, at best you're narrowing down the universe of things to go check out. Unless you're committing to buy the one that gets the most votes.
Could be interesting collect the responses, graph them, and run some analysis on how vocal each brand's fan community is.
Hondas are pretty safe, when I totaled my Acura I didn't even feel the impact, when I got out I was pissed thinking I now had a dent in my front bumper...only to find out that the whole front end was destroyed
