What's the first modification you should do? It varies depending on the car.....

People ask me all the time "What's the first thing I should do to improve the performance of my musclecar?" I assume they want some stock answer-like headers or a carb and intake or whatever. But the truth is it varies greatly depending on the car. For example if you have a late '60's or early '70's Chevelle or Camaro with a 4-speed-the first thing you should do is replace the awful Muncie or Inland shift linkage with a Hurst Competition Plus. For some insane reason-these linkages were body mounted, and would bind up under load. Forget powershifting at 6,000 rpm; you'd be lucky if you could change gears at 3,500-4,000 if you had your foot in it. Small-block Novas and Camaros that had Saginaw 4-speeds were just as bad. If you had a GTO or a Firebird or an Olds 442-they had a Hurst shifter from the factory that was transmission mounted and could she shifted quickly at any speed. If you have a disco-era Pontiac Trans-Am with an automatic transmission, the first mod you need to make is an axle ratio change. These cars had salt-flats gearing like 2.41:1 or 2.56:1. Swapping for something in the 3.23:1 to 3.73:1 range will give a stunning improvement in 0-60 and 1/4 mile times without hurting gas mileage or drivability too much. 4-speed models, the shoe is on the other foot-they came from the factory with 3.23:1 or 3.42:1 gears. For them the first thing I would do is get an Edelbrock Performer intake. The factory '75-79 intakes have a restrictive throttle opening that really limits power above 4,000 rpm. The point I'm making is the gear change on the TH350 models would net a bigger improvement than changing the intake. On the stick models that already had decent gearing-the intake would net a big improvement. Even bigger than opening up the exhaust-which should be the second mod. See what I'm saying?  If you have a 1970-73 351C Mustang-a lot of these cars had 2bbl-carburation-obviously the first thing should be to get a 4bbl carb and intake. If the car has a 4bbl from the factory and an automatic trans, then the first thing I'd do is add a B&M or TransGo shift improver kit. If you have a 440,4-speed Road Runner or a 396 / 4-speed Camaro or a 455 / 4-speed Trans-Am-or any other big-block car with a manual trans and leaf-spring rear suspension that has traction problems-the first thing I'd do is get a set of traction bars or a pinion snubber. You don't need more power-you need to put what you have to the ground before you start adding more tire-shredding power and torque!!  If you have any '60's or early '70's Chrysler musclecar-the first thing I'd do is get a Mopar Performance or MSD electronic distributor!!  Or if you want to stay "period correct" and still use points-then I'd get an Accel or Mallory high-performance point-type distributor. The reason is factory Mopar points were awful. They'd close up and bounce above about 4,500 rpm. You never saw a Mopar racer without extra points in his toolbox-and they were usually Accel or Mallory!!  So you can see every car is unique in their weaknesses that I would fix first. Do some research before you throw away money on something that doesn't offer a huge bang for the buck. Mastermind