$1500 second hand Megan’s, drove to work yesterday on my Bridgestone’s that I got 2nd with at Crows two weeks ago. Wheels were $500 from T_Rod, $1700 for the tune and header, $700 for the front swaybar, $2k for the diff, not much slower without the diff and fancy bar and nice header, could cut the build down to ~$3.5k to prove a point, amortize that over the ~6 years I’ve been autoxing this car semi seriously.
Going to switch to yokos tomorrow to finish them off at a local the weekend after, a hundred ish runs iirc.
imho Street class should stay close to showroom stock as an entry point, parity will always be difficult (unless you pax every car individually) and even with cheap shocks and sways and wheel offsets and bump stops each desirable car will progress. If you want to cover warts, move up, the classing is already a decent pyramid, philosophy is reasonable rules as written just need a refresh for clarity and conciseness. Driving still beats the hell out of mods 99% of the time, changing my car could’ve bought me a few tenths of a second a few weeks ago but most of my >1.4s deficit was skill disparity.
Edit; if Heitkotter can win with $2k coils, $300 front bar, a $1k header + tune, and <$2k wheels & tires I can at least trophy and go home happy with not much more investment. You can certainly spend more then $5k on an ST car but it’s not getting you much.