I have been surveying my resources recently and have figured out that I can scrape together roughly 17-19k if I absolutely must do so.
This can lead to one of many paths, but the two main paths that I'm looking at now are turning my 240hatch into a very, very respectable CA/SR powered S13, or ditching (for all practical purposes) the 180sx for an FD3S. The project would look something like this:
a) SR20DET/CA18DET with turbo upgrade (thinking along the lines of the pulsar GTI-R ball bearing T28, but may be able to go bigger/better), FMIC, appropriate fuel management, boost controller etc as well as body kit, rims, LSD, clutch, full coilovers .
or
b) 1993/4 (if possible '94+) FD3S, intake, T-back exhaust (that's TURBO-back <img src="#/f/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='

'> meaning incl. dpipe) and hopefully coilovers... some sort of IC if funds allow.
I put the other choices down for the sake of other crazy possibilities.