I recently got a hankering for a pre-3 Mazda Protege... The mazdaspeed one is supposed to be a real hoot to drive (aside from a sissy transmission), and the stock 2.0 one and the MP5 both share the same motor aside from the turbo, which means easy upgrade to turbo.

The only problem I came up with was that you'd need a backup transmission if you drove it hard and the non-mazdaspeed ones don't have LSD.