Škoda Fabia vRS (Mk2)

The long version

Škoda borrowed the Volkswagen Group's twincharged 1.4 — supercharged for low-end response, turbocharged for the top end, a genuinely clever piece of engineering VW abandoned a few years later for a simpler single turbo — and put 180 hp through a DSG-only gearbox in a hatchback that still looked like sensible Škoda transportation. The no-manual policy cost it some purist credibility, the same complaint leveled at the Polo GTI of the same era, but it left the car to buyers who wanted genuine pace without rowing their own gears, and those buyers have generally kept and used the cars rather than flipped them. It never sold in the US — Škoda has not been in the American market since the 1990s — so it is Forbidden Fruit by default, known here mostly to people who cross-shopped it against a Fiesta ST or a Polo GTI while living in Europe. Values dropped hard through the 2010s and have mostly stayed down, the unglamorous curve of a car whose badge never carried any speculative premium.