Sp the biggest danger when looking to buy a sporty car with high BHP thats good value is that one tends to overlook every other trait of the car other than its BHP, and ends up goign for an early 90's BMW that can't fit anyone in the back, doesn't handle as well as todays cars, has a lot of BHP but the engine isn't nearly as efficient with that power as modern day engines, has awful fuel economy, high insurance bills, and most importantly if it crashes into a squirrel you'll die.
So I suggest you be a discerning buyer and search the autotrader website for a 2.0 litre ford focus which is pretty fast 125 mph top speed 0-62 in 9.3 seconds, has fantastic sporty handling, good gearbox, lots of space, comfortable, easy to drive, fuel efficient and if you get it in relatively high spec has got good alloy wheels and again most importantly unlike 99% of everythign else you can get for less than 3 grand if you crash into a some form of woodland life its 4 stars in the crash tests will mean that the poor creature will come out worse off than you. So I did a quick search on auto trader and found a 2.0 Ghia hatchback 2001 with relatively horredously low mileage at 32,000, sold by a dealer who may even give you a warantee, all for �2,900.
I include the link to the Euroncap website with the crash test results for that model of focus, unfortunately the vast majority of other cars mentioned in other posts were built at at time when they didn't care whether you lived or died when knocking into another car, so the website won't have test results before the late 90's.
Good luck choosing a car, I do hope you find a very good one, and a very safe one, as accidents happen.
http://www.euroncap.com/tests/ford_focus_1999/ 34.aspx