OK, I'm just intrigued as to which route people would follow here. If you had a car that was totally standard, steelies, normal bumpers etc and you had an amount of cash to spend that would either get you something performance enhancing like a cam kit and throttle bodies or you could buy a new set of alloys and a nice (non max power) body kit and sex the car up, what would you do?

Drive a fast crappy looking car, or drive a slower nice looking car?

I would go for looks as a standard Escort or Mondeo just wouldn't do it for me looks-wise.