Performance 101 | Performance Foundation First

Build your performance foundation first.

No matter what your project - large, small, daily driver, street scorcher, open-track demon or full-out competition racecar - the starting point is always the same -- Your Foundation!

A Performance Foundation consists of three basic elements that are discussed in more detail further on.

• Chassis
• Suspension
• Wheels, tires and brakes

Whether you are building a house, garage, sky scraper or improving the performance of your sports car, a solid foundation always gives you a quality result. Most late model vehicles are a uni-body construction and the OE suspension can rob you of power, performance, handling, grip and ride quality even before you do anything.
Adding a lot of power to a basically stock car is a recipe for disaster or at least a jolt of major excitement as you try to control, turn or stop a speeding rubber band. Building your Performance Foundation first won't give you any more horsepower, but it will allow you the opportunity to actually use more of the power you have.

Many times we have installed only a chassis kit and suspension on a Mustang only to have someone drive it and then say - "Hey what did you do to the engine, it runs great!" The reality is that we didn't even touch the engine, but he did make more of the power available and usable.

For those that have ever been to a Performance Driving Schools or Open Track events you know first hand that there is a lot more speed in the chassis than there is in the engine.

Use common sense and be careful of what you read.
Magazines and the internet are a marvelous resource of information for the performance enthusiast. But as you peruse the pages, approach the editorial and comments responsibility. Most of the magazines have a small staff and they don't have the resources to double-check and verify everything they write about so they have to rely on information presented. So complete and total accuracy is sometimes difficult to achieve.
The editors work extremely hard to give you a quality read each month so as you read articles that may apply to your car or project just keep an open perspective. Just because someone else did it, doesn't necessarily mean that you can, or it will work for you or it will fit with the rest of your plan.
Keep an open perspective, use commonsense and enthusiast magazines (and the internet) can be a valuable resource for information and entertainment.

Put your total "package" together
It all comes down to this. The "Package" -- your "Package".
If you follow racing or any professional team sport, you already know that no single element can create a winner. It takes the whole package, the whole team of components working together to achieve a winning result.
The same applies to your car. From a small series of upgrades to the biggest project, building one step at a time or all at once, planning and coordinating your package so that everything works together will insure a winning result. And it will probably save you a lot of time, money and aggravation too!

Performance 101 was writen by the legondary chassis tuner and performance guru Kenny Brown