Maximum Motorsports grip in a box will have you covered in the handling dept. ( the results are available on their web site as tested by ....road and track.... if I remember right ) I personally run their chassis brace kit with the full length welded in subs, HnR springs, and Tokikos. With 17x8's it handles damn good for a stang.
As for performance, your motor is already looking pretty good, any decent h/c/i car n/a will run mid to low 13s on true street tires (this is with a handling
suspension), with a conservative power adder of choice (100-125 shot / 8-10 lbs) most guys run deep in the 12s 110-115mph.
Now if you had a drag
suspension and slicks you could take a full second off those times, but your handling will go out the window....
Now as for top-end, people talk alott of trash about how fast some cars are, because they read a huge number in a magazine.... what they fail to realise is that quite often, you can smoke that car from 70-120 with good gearing and decent power. After that, yeah he'll real you in and blow by you... but how often do you run somebody on the freeway above 120-130? Yes it happens, but like 9 out of 10 dont you (or they) usually back off by then. And for that last 1 of 10 can you live with the fact that your 25,000 dollar stang got beat by a 40,000 dollar vette, or 60,000 dollar nsx, or a 100,000 dollar porsche? I know I can... with the money I saved, I put a down payment on a house.
Now you need to get it stopped...
IMHO there is no better bang for the buck than the Motorsport 2300-K kit (94+ cobra brakes for your fox) Its avail from Summit Racing for about 1600. Now I know that sounds like alott, but you get five lug conversion, four wheel disks, alcon calipers (the exact same ones in the baer kit), motorsport axles, new mastercylinder, brake lines, etc... The performance difference is night and day from stock brakes. The only "drawback" to the kit is you need to run a 17" wheel, but if your worried about handling, you should be looking at 17, or 18s anyhow. Now you can do the install yourself in a garage (i did mine in two days, one for the front, one for the back) but you will need a good supply of tools, and good auto / mechanic skills.
- some guys will tell you to call baer or willowood, and they make great stuff, but youll pay out the wazoo for their name. Like 12-1500 for the FRONT ONLY. And just fyi if you go read reviews on web sites, where people have put on baer / whoever kits, there are quite a few that are disappointed they paid the extra money after-the-fact.
Good luck with whatever you decide.
DD-