Like it was previously stated and SRT-4, even an EVO and an STI are relatively cheap cars, sure theyre fast and yes they do have alot of engineering put into them to make them such for the price tag, they are like exotic cars built with a budget, therefore a lot of sacrifice had to been put into the car the cars will not ride as smooth as a AMG Mercedes Benz or a M5 or a Ferrari or Lamborghini sure they are almost as fast as some of these cars stock, but with the more refined and at the same time expensive cars you get the power plus some other qualities like LUXURY for once, they are also a status quo type a vehicle like no joe shmo will go out and buy a 100k$+ vehicle and drive it around, when you see someone in one of these extremely expensive cars well you know they are rolling in dough or they wouldnt be driving them.
At the same time we can do things to sort of catch up to those cars whether it be putting navigation, nice comfortable seats, better quality interiors, nicer wheels, intakes, exhausts and other performance goodies, we might be faster then them, we might outhandle them, we might even have higher quality in out interiors but guess what when someone who doesnt know jack about our cars they will still just say oh look at that hooked up neon, or that hooked up lancer.
In the end us modifying our cars is very very very pointless in the end its still a lancer or a neon. And sorry Bradley an SRT-4 is not american muscle, and an EVO is not a high performance sports car, they do resemble high performance, but for performance u have to pay. Thats why both u and me got exhausts to push a lil more out of our engines and such.
Anyways im done in closing you get what u pay for and if it is strictly speed go for a neon or a lancer if you want the other finer things in life then you know you going to pay for them, in the end they are both cars and they are good for what they are
type too much