what are the best cars to turbocharge?

Why are you thinking only japanese FWD cars? RWD are generally preferred for just about all road activities; FWD are simply easier to manufacture and cheaper as well. Since the differential and input members are in the front, it also severely limits the turn radius of the vehicle. In general, RWD have better handling capabilities without losing the power that AWD cars do.

If you're doing a turbo add on to a N/A or Normally Aspirated vehicle, you'd best get a car with a somewhat older engine until you get some real experience under your belt.

Compression is an important factor when considering turboing a vehicle. A vehicle with high compression is more likely to be damaged when the engine is under boost. Drawback here is that by lowering compression, you lower engine efficiency as well, which'll be bad considering you're running a turbo anyway.

Another thing to consider is what range you want the turbo to boost in. It takes a certain amount of exhaust to cause a turbo to spool, so you don't want a turbo too small for your car so you're boosting at like 1500rpm, but you don't want to be boosting at 7000rpm either. It's best to ask somebody who knows about turbos enough to understand the charts that come with each turbo whether it'll work well on your car.

Each turbo has a measurement in terms of boosting PSI as well. A higher PSI means it's forcing more air in means it's more powerful, but also more likely to blow your engine. Also, these are generally harder to spool.

Aside from needing a turbo, blow off valve and wastegate (might be internally wastegated turbo) you will need to decide how you're going to have the gas controlled. Most people prefer to get a standalone computer such as MegaSquirt. This allows you to tune your engine and input fuel rates by % capacity of the injectors capabilities. (I dont know about how other ECUs besides MegaSquirt work but probably similar.)

Another possibility is an adjustable FPR which is regulated by the vacuum, or rather pressure in your intake to cause your injectors to inject more or less fuel.

Now, to actually answer your question:

Volvos have a large following for turboing. Many of their cars come stock with turbos (although small) which can more easily be upgraded than adding an entire turbo set-up. Volvos are fairly inexpensive if you get an older one (very reliable and RWD) and they have a large following where you can get help and advice, for example, www.turbobricks.com is a terrific resource.

Another car that makes a great turbo'd car is the BMW E30. These are 1.8 or 2.5/2.7 liter engines that come with a pretty good power base.

1.8=~144hp

2.5=~168hp

2.7=~122hp (but a hell-ton of torque instead)

The 1.8 liter M10 engine has stronger internals and is preferred over the 1.8 liter M42 engine because of that.

The 2.5 liter M20 has a fairly high compression, but if you take the bottom end from a 2.7 and put it on the 2.5, it lowers compression and makes an ideal car for turboing.

The E30 is also RWD and has lots of nice features (one of which is that it costs generally $1200-3000 leaving you with several grand for upgrades and turboing.)

www.e30tech.com is a great resource for turbo'd E30s but unfortunately the owner is currently on vacation and anybody who signs up will have limited access til he grants full approval (I'm still waiting.)

So come to the light side and give up your silly FWD japanese car ways! :D

Good luck, don't blow your engine.

Do not get a fwd Honda. They are the cause to all of the worlds problems. Just go rent a super cool video game for street racing. It will save you in the long run because if your asking such a question right now on yahoo answers your not going to be building up a turbo car from n/a.

No way.

This is way too broad of a question.

a turbo like a supercharger requires an engine have a lower compression ratio or a very small presure turbo this is the biggest problem most people dont get right. parts break when you try to stuff 13-1 presure in a cylinder designed for 10.0-1 the car model isnt the issue nor the engine size. a really good engine man could figure out just the right boost presure to give the engine exactly what it will allow and be daily drivable.

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RE:

what are the best cars to turbocharge?

i love the civic, rsx type s, and integra gsr/type r... mostly because of the vtec engine... but i hear that turbos and vtecs have bad flow and compression rate... so what car is under 9000 and has at least 1.6L engine... fwd or rwa or awd... doesnt matter

Cheapest Turbo Car

The best cars to turbo charge are Honda Hatchback and EF. My friend usually race and his ride is EF.