Get ready for a really wacky concept this time, but here it goes...

How about a classic tuner bodystyle with a classic US muscle car powertrain?

I hatched this plot while checking out this 1985 Corolla hatch (no pun intended) on Joplin, MO Craigslist.

At a $2250 asking price, it is reasonably affordable for what it is. For those readers who are unaware, this body style of Corolla is known as the AE86 (its internal chassis code at Toyota) and is revered as the end of an era for "old skool" tuner cars, as it was one of the last rear wheel drive Corollas that Toyota has made to date. As such, the price of such a car is usually quite high, and they are also usually already souped up with race suspensions and engines for autocross and drift events, which would make a possible V8 conversion difficult.

But this could be the perfect candidate. The seller says that the car has a bad clutch fan and a misfire which, along with its realtively high mileage, sounds like good encouragement for an engine swap. The most obvious would be to go with an LS (everyone seems to choose those nowadays), but in the interest of space preservation underhood, I would be more likely to go with a 5.0 Ford/ 5 speed combo out of an early 1990s Ford Mustang. You could even leave the rough exterior alone and go with a sort of "sleeper" appearance. 

Let me know what you think.