Nissan 240SX (S13)
Why 5.3: A cheap, well-balanced RWD chassis that became the default entry ticket into drift culture — and got consumed by it. The stock survivors left are worth more than the modified ones that made the reputation.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
The KA24DE is a truck engine: flat, coarse, no cam drama and only 6,400 rpm to use. What people actually hear at drift events is an aftermarket exhaust or a swapped engine entirely. As delivered, it is one of the plainest noises in the index.
4-cylinder · naturally aspirated · 6,400 rpm redline · rated 4.0 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €3k (1998) → €18k (2026), trending up · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Built before ISOFIX existed, so there are no anchor points at all. A child seat here is a seatbelt installation, and the belt geometry of the period was not designed with one in mind.
Derived from production years and seating layout, not a per-car source. ISOFIX was standardised as ISO 13216 in 1997, required on new EU model types from 2011 and on all new EU cars from 2014.
The long version
Drift culture adopted this chassis almost by accident, a mid-tier Nissan coupe that happened to have the right weight balance and a rear end nobody minded breaking loose, and most of the fleet has been welded, swapped and crashed in service of that reputation ever since. The stock, unmolested cars still around are now worth noticeably more than the built ones people actually see at events, an inversion the drift community mostly shrugs at. Values have climbed steadily as the supply of clean examples shrinks faster than the demand for them does, but the paddock at any grip day still skews toward cars that look thoroughly used.