Suspension upgrades ,the best route
No need to loose the leaf springs and torsion bars.
The Hotchkiss equipped cars handle extremely well and their still using bars and leafs.
Take a look at the threads in the Suspension, Steering, chassis forum. Lots of good stuff there.
Exactly so. The Hotchkis TVR kit will handle just as well with a few tweaks as a coil over equipped car. Coil overs are not inherently better, they're just a different type of spring. They still have more tuning options, but the options for torsion bar suspension are growing every day, and have gotten to the point where most folks can get what they need to have a really well handling car.
You can even bypass the TVR kit, which has some things you don't need and lacks some things you do, and go this route...
This is what I would do (and have basically done on my Duster)
1.06 (or bigger) Firm Feel torsion bars - $355
Tubular UCAs (PST, FFI, etc) $350
Adjustable strut rods (PST SR 14385) $279
Solid tie rod sleeves (PST SAS 440S) $49
LCA boxing plate (PST LCAPLTMOP621) $14.50
Greasable LCA pins (FFI w bushings) $135
Hellwig Sway bars
Tubular front 1 1/8 #55904 $175
Solid rear 3/4 #6907 $237
Afco leaf springs
20231M (121 lb) $320
or
20231 (142 lb) $340
1 bushings for shackles
Energy suspension 2-2117G $9
Bilstein RCD shocks
(RCD-70-56663) $400
Which puts you at $2,344. Yes, that's more than the TVR kit at $2,100, but you get torsion bars and shocks, which you don't get with the TVR.
It's also $2k less than a Alterkation set up for the front. And $4k less than a Alterkation front and Street Lynx rear set up, since I already included the rear suspension. You can use that money for some nice 13" front and 11.7" rear rotor kits from Dr. Diff for some serious stopping power, and still have enough to get some nice 17 or 18" rims and tires to actually put it all to the road. You can even take out the Bilsteins and replace them with Hotchkis or Viking adjustable for some extra adjustability for a few hundred bucks more. And I bet you would STILL be ahead of where you would be financially with just the AlterK and street lynx. So you could pick up a Flaming River manual 16:1 steering box, or a Borgeson power steering box from Bergman Auto Craft. And still might even be able to get the frame connectors you'd need to really enjoy the car.
And at that point, you would have a
really well handling old mopar, instead of just a couple of bolt on kits with thousands more to spend on brakes, rims, and tires.