Miata
You sound like a Grassroots Motorsports forum guy. I've driven them but they didn;t do much for me. Same with a BMW E36 M3. Nice but, meh. Not sure what I want though the two competing virtues of light-weight, stellar handling (Lotus Elise, tweaked Miata) and heavier, high HP(Corvette, 2012 Boss Mustang) were impressive to watch on the same course. Similar times with wildly different tools.
Guys in Canadia were willing to look at modifying an SVX rack a couple of years ago with the intention of creating a quicker ratio. Over $1k. Like a lot of things I would like to do, I can't justify the investment when the car isn't worth much and if I took it off to sell it here, you guys would just low-ball me
R-comps are racing tires. I looked at a set recently but came away with the same concerns. Too costly to justify on the car. I also happen to compete in a very strong region for autoX (Detroit-who'd a thunk it???) so even if the car were tweaked, I'd still be cruched. When I was at my peak in 2007 in my more fully developed '95 when I was racing about every 2nd weekend, I was still getting killed by over 4 seconds on a 40 second run. I know I'm rusty now but I was getting trounced by 10 seconds or more (on a 555 second course) by others in SM (5 speed swap classes the car in Street Modified- a class I'll never come close to competing in).