American car enthusiasts have an unquenchable thirst for cheap speed, but in these post-pandemic days it feels farther away than ever as the average price of a new car reaches all-time highs. An unexpected champion of attainable performance has arisen, hailing from a company that just put its quickest and most powerful car out to pasture and insists the future is full autonomous driving. Yes, the best bang-for-your-buck speed today can be found in the 2026 Tesla Model 3 Performance .
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Plaid for the People
Going fast in a straight line is as much America’s pastime as baseball, and so is saving a buck. We all love a supercar, but a muscle car the average American could realistically afford is a cultural landmark. Showing your working-class taillights to Richie Rich and their expensive exotic is a time-honored tradition. Today’s champion, though, isn’t a V-8 muscle car or even a turbocharged import, but an all-American EV.
Get this: 2.9 seconds. That’s how quickly the new Model 3 Performance gets to 60 mph. Spend all the time you want scouring MotorTrend test results, but you won’t find another car that quick for anywhere close to the price. That’s because the Model 3 Performance starts at $56,380, and almost everything else as quick is several times more expensive. The only cars that get close are the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, which costs another $11,000, and the Chevy Corvette , which starts more than $15,000 higher than the Tesla.
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Now, we’re not necessarily calling the Tesla “cheap speed” because $56,000 is more than the average price of a new car. We’re classifying it as affordable or attainable speed, because for the price of a midsize family SUV you can have a sport sedan that will take six-figure cars to Gapplebee’s at any stoplight. It might be a bit of stretch for the average person, but it’s hardly expensive by performance car standards.
It’s not just quick off the line, either. The Model 3 Performance runs an 11.1-second quarter mile at 123.2 mph. Here, again, the only other cars running low 11s for anywhere close to the same money are the Ioniq 5 N and the Corvette. Anything else spitting distance from being a 10-second car is way more expensive.
Well, there is one other car that kinda fits the bill: the old Model 3 Performance . That one would hit 60 mph in 3.2 seconds but slacked off to an 11.7-second quarter mile at 115.7 mph. It also cost $10,000 more than today’s model, and that’s before you account for inflation, which brings it to the equivalent of $86,000 today.