Wheels or Springs?
 

In your opinion, which is better to do first?

For what? For performance wheels alone don't matter. If you're getting new tires, and getting the right ones, that's the biggest improvement you can make with the car. Springs alone aren't good for much at all other than looks.

This is purely for look

Light wheels/Tires - performance
Springs - looks

In my opinion, stock suspension is plenty good for regular people.

I asked a similar question before. the overall majority said wheels, and do it right. I've seen people put ones that are too wide or too big. a good point of reference is what others are installing I got 18x8 +45, some go 18x8.5 +37 or +48.

Get a proper tire. I've noticed people go all out on wheels, and spend ridiculous amounts of money there, and then buy cheap tires. The car looks great standing still, and drives great at "normal" driving. now when you try to play with the car on corners.... that's another story. A friend of mine did this on his 350Z, and ended up upgrading tires shortly. My advice would be to save until you have the money to get both wheels and tires.

Just check your budget, and if you have to wait some more, do it. it'll save you the money of buying 2 sets of tires.

would that be a good setup with stock suspension? my main worry is the clearance between the tire and the shocks

I went 225/40R18 Advan Neova AD08 (the new updated version is the AD08R, bu the R hasn't arrived to my country).

as with wheels I went for 18x8 +48 Sparco Assetto Gara, and a friend of mine went with 18x8.5 +48 Work Emotion wheels, and he picked some Goodyear Assymetric 235/40R18

Always a useful reference is this website

You can see that my friend's setup is a little taller (larger overall tire diameter).

Checkout what others have setup on their car. There is really no definite answer to who has a better setup overall, just read around on the forums.

tires

The single biggest improvement from stock is upgrading to 18" wheels and appropriate tires for your driving application (road, track day, time trial/competitive, etc). This has been validated on the track with lap time data (and posted elsewhere so I won't repost here). Key here is not to increase the weight of the wheel substantially over stock as increasing unsprung weight will degrade suspension performance. Our stock wheels weight ~20.1lbs. I upgraded to a set of 18x8" wheels that weight the same as stock so any increase in unsprung wieght would be due to a bigger tire.

Aside from the cosmetic benefits (depending on your tastes), you need to approach changes in springs as it relates to the overall suspension setup and your goal (increased performance or enhanced look without compromising ride compliance, etc). For me I did springs after I uprated wheels to 18.8/235/35, installed Magnaflow CATBack, and dropped in a K&N filter. I'm keeping my OEM wheels in the event a do some spec FR-S racing in the future.

Must everything on this forum be about performance? The question was, wheels or springs? He didn't ask about tires. He didn't ask about suspension settings. He said nothing regarding driving style. HE SAID LOOKS. Give him his answer and stop trying to push other views and topics on to him.

My opinion on this would be to try and do them both at the same time. If not, just get the wheels, but the wheel gap will probably bug you till you get springs. ...and vice versa if you get springs first.


Edit: I do understand that everyone is trying to help.

An 18" wheel will absolutely not make you faster on a track, sorry. Same width/compound tire a 17" will be faster because the weight is closer to the hub (the barrel of the wheel is the heaviest part).

if its strictly on looks, 18" wheels would be a good thing to upgrade to as it makes the car look more aggressive than stocks...

Strictly for looks do springs first because those will determine what wheels you can run.

I'd try to do both at once. If you're just getting springs, they cost no more than $260 or so, might as well just save that little bit extra so you can do it both at once.