Here are the best performance cars for $65,000

abcnews.go.com:

The number of outstanding performance cars priced at $65,000 might surprise you.

The $65,000 milestone might seem like an arbitrary price cap for a list of excellent performance cars, but look carefully and you’ll discover that it’s a sweet spot for some of today’s most compelling performance offerings. Look upmarket from here and you’ll quickly be shopping in six figures without a meaningful gain in performance. And below this cost benchmark are some solid entry-level cars, but they offer far less performance. Here, then, are Edmunds’ five best performance cars for about $65,000. All pricing includes destination.

If you’re old enough to remember motorsports in the 1980s then you know why the RS 3’s five-cylinder engine is special. It was a five-cylinder that powered Audi’s greatest motorsport effort ever, the Sport Quattro, which won the brand four World Rally Championship titles. The RS 3 relives that glory with a turbocharged 401-horsepower 2.5-liter five-cylinder linked to a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission that routes power to all four wheels. It snorts and pops its way to a 0-60 mph time under 4 seconds while maintaining livable daily comfort, excellent tech, and room for 6-footers in the back seat. It’s a small sedan with a big attitude, especially at this price.

Starting manufacturer’s suggested retail price: $63,395

With 473 horsepower from a turbocharged 3.0-liter inline six-cylinder engine, a tidy coupe body style, and your choice of a six-speed manual or eight-speed automatic transmission, the 2025 M2 checks all the small-car hot-rod boxes. In Edmunds’ testing, an automatic-equipped 2024 M2 — which had 20 fewer horsepower — hit 60 mph in 3.6 seconds and cleared the quarter mile in 11.6 seconds.