Every new car on the North American market these days is capable of extra-legal speeds, but for may drivers, the thrill is how fast you get there. What you do when you hit the limit is up to you. Some will back off, others will back off “soon,” and the the rest keep on going.

So, looking at making up a list of fastest cars is, first of all, a matter of definition. Really, top speed is a pretty theoretical measure, since few of us will ever actually get to experience that rush. The next best statistic is probably zero to sixty acceleration time, and that is exactly what the folks over at Yahoo! Autos used.

Again, leaving the list without some restriction is going to put a bunch of supercars at the top – car’s we’re unlikely ever to see in person. So, they constrained the list to a more practical limit and capped the MSRP at $30,000.

The resulting list is interesting in that it highlights the choices available for those on a budget, or those who prefer not to spend unnecessarily. To keep the effort credible, they used performance data generated during tests by Edmunds.com and, as it turned out, the Top Five cars all showed 0-60 times of less than six seconds.

In as much as you have to set the price cap somewhere and setting it at $31,795 might seem odd, the $30K cap has excluded the 6.2-liter Camaro SS as well as a couple of Euro imports that bumped their list prices recently. So, here are the top contenders for affordable performance in today’s market, showing name, 0-60 time and MSRP.

1. Ford Mustang GT, 4.8 sec, $29,145
2. Subaru Impreza WRX, 5.2 sec, $25,495
3. Ford Mustang Coupe (V6), 5.6 sec, $22,145
4. Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart, 5.8 sec, $27,695
5. Hyundai Genesis 3.8 R-Spec Coupe, 5.9 sec, $26,750

What the list also shows, is that there’s more than one approach to delivering performance. Short, lightweight and turbocharged characterize the Subaru and Lancer entries, while displacement is the answer for the remaining three, all of which have power ratings north of the 300 mark.