As enthusiasts, we all love a performance bargain. There's nothing better sometimes than finding a car that's incredibly cheap, but can match or outrun something from a fancy prestige manufacturer. That's absolutely the case for anyone who picked up an example of the car we're going to talk about now when it was new. The Late 1980s And The Early 1990s Were The Beginning Of Another Golden Age Of Performance MecumLooking at the Sports Cars and Supercars that came out of the 1980s and 1990s, it wouldn't be surprising to think that this period was an absolute golden age of performance. A lot of people would agree with you, too. This really was a time where automakers were trying their hardest to push the boundaries. Top speeds of production cars had finally broken the 200 mph barrier, and would soon go all the way up to 230 or even 240 mph. Turbocharging becoming commonplace also meant that more power could be drawn out of smaller engines, or that big engines could be pushed towards their absolute screaming extremes. Prestige Manufacturers Were Sometimes Being Put To Shame By Cars From More Mainstream Automakers Bring a TrailerA result of this new era of more performance is that, for the first time, cars from fairly normal automakers could actually match (or beat) those from the famous prestige manufacturers. While brands like Ferrari, Lamborghini and Aston Martin may have once exclusively ruled the roost when it came to outright performance, that really wasn't the case anymore. One of those cars that really demonstrated that is what, at first glance, seems like a fairly normal Japanese coupe from the late '80s and early '90s. But, underneath that subtle exterior is the potential for a true high-performance beast. The Nissan S13 Had Performance That Could Match A Ferrari's Bring A TrailerThe Nissan Silvia S13 is considered a JDM legend these days, and rightly so. Available with a variety of different engines, perhaps the most famous ones this had were the CA18DET 1.8-liter turbocharged inline-4, and the SR20DET 2-liter turbocharged inline-4. The CA18DET produces 173 horsepower and 166 lb-ft of torque, while the SR20DET produces 202 horsepower and 202 lb-ft of torque.With all that power that was available, it perhaps shouldn't be surprising that the S13 could have great performance. When the UK's CAR Magazine (a traditional automotive publication that at that point typically gave a lot of column inches to cars from prestige manufacturers) tested a European-market version of the S13 with the CA18DET engine, it recorded some seriously impressive figures. This included a 0-60 mph time of just 6.4 seconds, and a top speed of 142 mph. This was not only considerably faster than the other cars it was up against in the group test it was part of (the Honda Prelude, Toyota AE86 and Volkswagen Corrado), but it was also just as good as a car that Ferrari sold at the same time.The Ferrari Mondial T, the final and fastest version of this unloved mid-engined model, was recorded as having the same 0-60 mph time by the same publication. A 1989 test by Car & Driver backed this up further, recording a 0-60 mph time of 6.2 seconds. That's a fair bit faster than the Mondial was at the start of its run, where it had a disappointing 0-60 mph time of 9.4 seconds. But, that's still pretty embarrassing, considering it never got any faster than one of these Nissans! The S13's Price At The Time Makes Its Performance Even More Impressive Compared To The Ferrari's Bring A TrailerThe Nissan S13's numbers compared to the Ferrari Mondial's are crazy just on their own. What makes them even more impressive, though, is when you take a look at the price difference between the two cars. The UK market Nissan S13 that was used for that CAR Magazine test would have had a base price of around £16,996. A UK-market Ferrari Mondial T, meanwhile, would have cost a British buyer around £60,498-£62,702. That distinction was similar across the pond. A US-market Ferrari Mondial T would cost an American buyer around $97,000, while a US-market Nissan S13 cost around $12,999-$13,274 for base model examples. That means that, in showrooms back then, a Nissan S13 cost less than half the price of what Ferrari was trying to sell to people! There's A Big Catch To That Crazy, Ferrari-Beating Performance The S13 sounds like a great buy if you want a Ferrari-beating sports car that looks fairly normal, right? Well, there is a catch here for North American buyers. The fantastic engines that gave the S13 this kind of performance were never available for North American customers. The SR20DET was exclusively for the Japanese market, while the CA18DET engine was sold on the European side of the Atlantic but not the American side. The only engine that North Americans were allowed to have was the 2.4-liter KA inline-4. These are more utilitarian engines that you'd typically find in Nissan's trucks, and only produce 140 horsepower and 152 lb-ft in the SOHC version and 155 horsepower and 160 lb-ft of torque in the later DOHC version. It Isn't Impossible For American Enthusiasts To Get The Nissan 200SX's Ferrari-Beating Speed While those fantastic Ferrari-beating turbocharged engines were never officially put into any US-bound S13s, that doesn't mean that there isn't a way to put them in later. A big culture of engine swapping has built up around US-market S13s, specifically because owners want to get that great turbocharged performance that other markets got to enjoy. After all, this is theoretically a very easy job. Those cars were designed from the factory to be able to use those turbocharged engines. So, everything is already there within the platform to swap the 2.4-liter US-market engine for the smaller but more powerful turbocharged ones.Sources: Car & Driver, CAR Magazine, Ferrari, Nissan