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Here are a few of our automotive guilty pleasures

It goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. The world is full of cars, and just about as many of them are bad as are good. It's pretty easy to pick which fall into each category after giving them a thorough walkaround and, more important, driving them. But every once in a while, an automobile straddles the line somehow between good and bad — it may be hideously overpriced and therefore a marketplace failure, it may be stupid quick in a straight line but handles like a drunken noodle, or it may have an interior that looks like it was made of a mess of injection-molded Legos. Heck, maybe all three. Yet there's something special about some bad cars that actually makes them likable. The idea for this list came to me while I was browsing classified ads for cars within a few hundred miles of my house. I ran across a few oddballs and shared them with the rest of the team in our online chat room. It turns out several of us have a few automotive guilty pleasures that we're willing to admit to. We'll call a few of 'em out here. Feel free to share some of your own in the comments below. Dodge Neon SRT4 and Caliber SRT4: The Neon was a passably good and plucky little city car when it debuted for the 1995 model year. The Caliber, which replaced the aging Neon and sought to replace its friendly marketing campaign with something more sinister, was panned from the very outset for its cheap interior furnishings, but at least offered some decent utility with its hatchback shape. What the two little front-wheel-drive Dodge models have in common are their rip-roarin' SRT variants, each powered by turbocharged 2.4-liter four-cylinder engines. Known for their propensity to light up their front tires under hard acceleration, the duo were legitimately quick and fun to drive with a fantastic turbo whoosh that called to mind the early days of turbo technology. — Consumer Editor Jeremy Korzeniewski  Chevrolet HHR SS: Chevy's HHR SS came out early in my automotive journalism career, and I have fond memories of the press launch (and having dinner with Bob Lutz) that included plenty of tire-smoking hard launches and demonstrations of the manual transmission's no-lift shift feature. The 260-horsepower turbocharged four-cylinder was and still is a spunky little engine that makes the retro-inspired HHR a fun little hot rod that works quite well as a fun little daily driver.

2016 Hennessey CTS-V is properly ridiculous with 1,000 horsepower

We truly live in a halcyon era of automotive performance with models like the latest Shelby GT350 Mustang and 707-horsepower Challenger Hellcat. And now Hennessey Performance Engineering is bringing something with absolutely obscene power to the world with its tuned 2016 Cadillac CTS-V that packs a ludicrous 1,000 horsepower. The latest CTS-V isn't even on sale yet but should be a powerhouse straight from the factory. Under its carbon fiber hood is a 6.2-liter supercharged LT4 V8 with 640 horsepower and 630 pound-feet of torque that makes the sedan capable of a 200-mile-per-hour top speed. Hennessey's take ditches the blower in favor of two turbos to feed air to the engine. To cope with the extra power, the mill gets upgrades like forged aluminum pistons and forged steel parts for the rods and crankshaft, and transmission upgrades are also necessary to make it all work. Buyers can even spec things like carbon-ceramic brakes and a widebody kit to allow for bigger tires. The crazy numbers are leading to some big performance claims from company founder John Hennessey. "I believe that our 2016 Twin Turbo CTS-V will have a top speed approaching 240 mph," he said in the Caddy's announcement. Hennessey is building just 24 of these 1,000-horsepower sedans for the 2016 model year. However, for those that want to keep the supercharger under the hood, the company is also offering upgrades with 750 hp and 800 hp for the CTS-V too. All of them sound absolutely ridiculous in an utterly fantastic way. 2016 HPE1000 Twin Turbo Cadillac CTS-V Texas Tuner Plans to Build World's Fastest 4-Door Sedan Sealy, Texas-When the next generation Cadillac CTS-V hits the streets later this year, it will have 640+ hp and a top speed of nearly 200 mph. To the team at Hennessey Performance Engineering (HPE), this is a good starting point. The company plans to pick-up where they left off with the last gen CTS-V by producing the world's fastest 4-door sedan: The Hennessey HPE1000 Twin Turbo CTS-V. "A couple of years ago, the State of Texas gave us the opportunity to test one of our specially tuned CTS-Vs – our VR1200 Twin Turbo coupe. It ran 221 mph (356 km/h) on State Highway 130, near the Circuit of the Americas", said company founder, John Hennessey. "It was still pulling on when we ran out of road. I believe that our 2016 Twin Turbo CTS-V will have a top speed approaching 240 mph (386 km/h)". Hennessey plans to offer a limited run of only 24 units for the 2016 model year.

Top horsepower-per-dollar cars in 2017

Bang for the buck. That quasi-scientific statistic is bandied about by motor heads everywhere from classrooms to barrooms, though the truth of the matter is that it's exceedingly complex to measure. A fair performance-per-dollar index would include something like cross-referencing MSRP (Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price) with point-to-point times on a track or driving route, which is obviously hard to do comprehensively. But, for the sheer joy of talking about cars and playing with a big spreadsheet, there's always the horsepower-per-dollar index, which is more straightforward, albeit hilariously flawed. There are vagaries even with this simple formula, of course: MSRP for vehicles can change at a moment's notice, to say nothing of the bottom-line shifting that happens with local deals or showroom negotiation. For this list we're running with the straight MSRP wherever possible, and as recently reported as we can get it. All the vehicles on this list are 2017 models, and all trims are reported where the lowest price and differing power levels intersect. Some choices were made for personal preference and some for sanity, avoiding things like all 48 trim levels of the Ford Transit, all with the same horsepower). If this list were a simple top ten, or even a top fifty, you'd be bored to tears with all the red, white and blue that is represented. Following perfectly with conventional wisdom, American cars really do lead the world where hp/$ is concerned. So, for the sake of variety (and the sheer joy of seeing a minivan 'win' one round of this thing) I've sorted out some top five and bottom five lists for broad power categories. Let's dive in. Less Than 100 Horsepower Okay, okay, this is hardly a category we'll grant you. But we've often tried to click off all the sub-100-hp cars on sale in the US, and making this list gave us an excuse. It also illustrates that none of these smallish vehicles bring cheap horsepower to the table - for that you'll need a motorcycle. The segment-leading Chevy Spark (above) asks just over $139 for each hp, and that Smart Fortwo Electric Drive has hp on sale for about the same price as its very distant family cousin, the Mercedes-Benz SL65 AMG (insert your favorite Smart joke here... we know you want to).