Bold looks or sleeper?, Which do you prefer? Options

[blu94gt]

So a buddy and I were having a somewhat heated discussion of what he should do with his G35 and it pretty much came down to this: when building your car, would you rather give it bold looks (body kit, rims, etc) and sacrifice some performance or make the car a sleeper (all performance, pretty much stock looks). This can apply to any kind of car/bike, not just Celicas.

I personally prefer the sleeper. Get a good quiet exhaust, suspension setup, keep stock rims with some good tires, do whatever to the motor you want to do, and blow the doors off any un-suspecting opponent.

My favorite sleeper I've come across was an old POS VW hatch. It was an 80's something, brown and rusty, sounded like ****, running on steelies. He blew the doors off my Mustang, and my friend and I were just like "wtf." Turns out he pretty much had a swap from a newer VW GTi with a bigger turbo, downpipe, engine management, etc and had drilled a bunch of holes in the muffler and exhaust to make it sound like he was just running with an old rusty exhaust.

[95CelicaST]

When I owned a celica I was into bold, but bold gets you the wrong attention. Now with my WRX I am going sleeper- because its too expensive to get tickets. Plus most police will ticket a flashy ricer over someone who has a sleeper. I had a Greddy Ti-C catback, but it was too flashy for me. Sold it for an oem-look 3" vibrant catback. Looking at coilovers next and sway bars. Give it a subtle (legal) tint and call it good for now.

[blu94gt]

When I owned a celica I was into bold, but bold gets you the wrong attention. Now with my WRX I am going sleeper- because its too expensive to get tickets. Plus most police will ticket a flashy ricer over someone who has a sleeper. I had a Greddy Ti-C catback, but it was too flashy for me. Sold it for an oem-look 3" vibrant catback. Looking at coilovers next and sway bars. Give it a subtle (legal) tint and call it good for now.

It's amazing how attention can change with WRX's. When I had my 02 I bought it with 18" wheels, 3" turbo-back exhaust, TurboXS RFL blowoff, etc etc. It was fun, but it was loud, caught attention of racers and cops, etc. I bought a UTEC tuner for it, put the stock exhaust back on and did a Stage1 flash so it was pushing more power than it was with the exhaust. Ditched the blowoff valve and had a sweet car that would stomp another factory WRX.

I'd recommend some strut-tower bars for the WRX, they actually made a very noticeable difference on mine. Plus I got the front and rear for $20 total lol.