Our only Best Buy in this class, the Volkswagen New Beetle, offers interesting styling and a nice mix of comfort, performance, and economy. The New Beetle is the most practical and affordable in this class.

If raw performance is what you are after, we Recommend the fun-to-drive Acura RSX and Toyota Celica. These cars offer a lot of bang for your buck.

After skyrocketing over threefold in calendar 2000, Celica year-to-year sales dropped 31.2 percent in the first nine months of 2001. A faltering economy is an undoubted factor, but we also suspect some of the younger buyers Celica targets are defecting to more practical fun cars such as Toyota's own new Matrix compact sportwagon.

Celica is expected to be redesigned for 2004, a year earlier than Toyota's usual five-year timetable calls for. The current new-for-2000 design should see no major changes in the interim, but Toyota will reportedly seek to boost sales by offering more over-the-counter performance, handling and appearance parts for Celica, developed and marketed by the Toyota Racing Developments (TRD) division.