Cars for the beating

Inspired by the Sport Compact Car article 25 car guy adventures #7 "Buy a beater" and a picture someone showed me of a turbo charged saturn engine that had 220,000mi with the exaust vented through the front quarter panel, my friend and I are thinking of buying car. A car for the purposes of seeing how much horse, grip or whatever we can get out of it. However we are trying to figure out what kind of car to start out with. We are thinking import, but not completely closed to domestic, something compact (so no delta 88), a car that has a fun engine to kind of work on or has some kind of potential (my friend tried to convince me to modify a ford tempo...NO!) and most importantly cheap. We are working with a harsh budget and if we weren't we wouldn't buy a beater. So we are looking for ideas to start with.

Some ideas for cars that came up is

Hondas (parts are everywhere)
a saturn (repeat the picture)
Chevy Cavalier
VW Golf

Modifications are endless
we are not building this for comfort so no interior or maybe seats exept drivers

Sound is not an issue will do a straight exaust if it gets the most power out of car. Want to photograph flames

also please list fun junk yard parts modifications (ie Turbo of of BLANK will somewhat fit if used with BLANK) or something like that

Thanks for your replies and we want to post pictures of this project

again looking for a car that we will not feel bad to junk if it explodes (and mostlikely it will)

Donations are appreciated St. Paul MN

Other "beaters" that you can buy for dirt cheap prices include the Suzuki Swift/Geo Storm GT, Chevy Berreta (http://my89berettagtu.tripod.com/Beretta/Models.htm)/Oldmobile Achieva or (I think the GTZ/SCX is best for tuning), Mitsubishi Colt GT, pre-95 Legacy GT, Galant VR4, Diamante VR-X and the Pontiac Fiero.

I admit though the Saturn SC2 has a better engine for tuning than given credit to.