Car has 103 on it and already has wheels and new tires. Should I just throw down on suspension that will be good for a long time and suits every purpose I can come up with, replace it with Porsche OE, or get an ocd-fueled interior makeover of steering wheel, center console and shifter?

Also have been looking at racing seats and I think you could do a RECARO bucket seat for around town even on our bad roads here in Dallas without killing yourself but maybe that's just a pipe dream track candy and poorly deployed money.

 

If you are attempting to dual-purpose your car as a semi-daily driver and a weekend track car you are going to have to make some sacrifices on both ends. You could probably do a good street/track coilover setup which would give you a good stance on the street and provide good control on the track if you are willing to change the setup accordingly. Racing seats I suspect would get old in a daily driver unless you keep the bolstering reasonable to facilitate getting in and out of the car. Look for a good brake pad that will provide good street and track performance. You may have to put up with some brake noise on the street and maybe wheels constantly covered in brake dust. A good short-throw shifter will feel good on both the street and the track. Other interior mods are just bling and will do little to help you on the track. Driver training will pay off on the track and the street and will get you as much improvement as almost any mod to the car.


I would keep a good set of forged wheels and sticky tires on hand just for the track.

 

Tires first, dedicated summer tires like MPSS or SE04's if you are on all seasons, great for street and light track usage. Next a more aggressive alignment closer to GT3 specs with more negative camber up front to dial out some of the under steer. Then upgraded engine mounts to help reduce the rear end engine pendulum effects. Then a DSC control box to replace the OE PASM controller. It turns your suspension into a true active suspension stiffening up each corner as needed. Lastly stiffer sway bars to really hit those on/off ramps at speed.

Before the DSC box was available people would move to coilovers. Given how well the DSC box works and that the Dallas area roads are pretty bad I'd stay OEM shocks and try out the above list first. Then if you need more you could step up to coilovers and start removing the rubber bits in the car's suspension. But you will be giving up a tremendous amount of comfort at that point. Crappy streets are not friendly to stiffer suspensions.

 

Coil-overs

 

i like my GT2 seats, drove to Houston twice without any back pain. As for coil over, Porsche expert at my local Indy shop think it's overkill for street especially car is already lowered with aftermarket springs.

 

The DSC controller by TPC Racing looks pretty awesome, and I'm sure it's by far the best bang for the buck in suspension upgrades. I noticed how the 997.1 non-turbo models require an additional 3-axis accelerometer, which really tells you that they are implementing something real.