The current Honda Prelude has been around for a few years but it has plenty of power, excellent road manners, and gets reasonable fuel economy. If Prelude is a little too expensive, take a look at our other Best Buy the Volkswagen New Beetle. It offers interesting styling and a nice mix of comfort, performance, and economy.

If raw performance is what you are after we Recommend the Chevrolet Camaro, Ford Mustang, and Pontiac Firebird. Not as pleasant to live with on a daily basis, these cars offer a lot of bang for your buck. New last year, the fun-to-drive Toyota Celica also earns the Recommended nod with its reputation for reliability.

After a solid 48 percent year-to-year gain in calendar 1999, Cougar sales slumped 29 percent in 2000 to about 40,350. That's mediocre volume for a lower-priced car, though other sporty coupes are also in the sales doldrums, with Honda's Civic coupe the singular exception.

Late word from anonymous Ford insiders is that Cougar will be dropped in two to three years. Disappointing sales are just one reason. Another factor is that Cougar became a "platform orphan" when its parent sedan, the Ford Contour/Mercury Mystique, was dropped after 2000; this leaves Cougar a misfit in the corporate manufacturing scheme and thus an easy target for cost-conscious product planners. Also, Ford's latest plan for Mercury calls for fewer products selling in higher numbers to specific audiences, and a sporty coupe isn't in the picture.

Ford has already aborted a possible high-performance V6 Cougar as hinted by a concept model two years ago. A recent spy photo caught a Cougar prototype with a small rear door on the right and a possible second one on the left, as on Saturn's latest SC coupe, but this, too, will probably never make it to showrooms. However, a sporty coupe version of the next-generation Focus is in the works, and that one could be in Ford showrooms come 2005.