16yrs old, first car advise?!

While it's true that you can get close to BB power with a SBM, you have to give up a lot of things to get it, the biggest of which is low speed torque, which of course many will say is power: rightly so, but at 2000 rpm the more torque the engine makes, the more power it is making; on account of they are intimately linked by the formula. And while giving up torque at low rpm for a dragracer is not an issue, it is a really big deal for a streeter, cuz probably more than 85% of the time, the engine will running in or thru that low-rpm band.
Consider that 3.55s are the go-to rear gear for a streeter. But in an effort to keep up with the BBs a 4.10 might be selected;and most often we are using the 2.45-1.45-1.00 trannys.
There are a number of problems with this set-up;
#1 is; if you have a cam that power-peaks at say 5500 (in an effort to keep up to the big boys), then, with this automatic, it will want to be shifted at 6500 to drop into second at 3800ish. So that's 1000rpm after the power peak to 1700 under the power peak. That is a 2700 rpm powerband requirement.
#2 is;The 4.10s are great for blasting out of the gate with a starter gear of
4.1x2.45=10. but the rest of the time,not so much, and especially horrible on the hiway.
#3 is; the total sogginess of the lower rpm band in getting to where the power is. A big TC is gonna be a requirement; Ok for a dragracer, not so much for a streeter.
#4 is; 4.10s will hit 49ish mph at 6500, and then comes the 59% gear split. .59 x 6500 =3800ish. So the little engine will have to pull itself back up outta that hole on its way to the speed limit, while the BBpowers on by...65mph in second is about 5000 rpm, which is well below the power peak.
So yeah you can make BB power numbers with the SBM, but is it worth it? And will it actually keep up to a BB?
For a streeter IMO the BB power number is not the be-all/end-all. There are just too many sacrifices for me. FOR ME.
I swapped out the 292/292/108 cam and gave up the 11.3 CR, almost as fast as possible.Awesome power at the top, but just not streetable enough for me, a DD/streeter, at the time.
The next cam was a 270/276/110 and I lowered the CR to 10.9. This was an awesome street cam. Mega torque in the lower rpms for a M/T equipped SBM. Mega torque at about 2000 to 4000 is what a streeter needs. Then match that torque to your driving style, with TM, Torque Multiplication. Of course it's easy to overpower a street chassis with too much torque, so the next cam was a 276/286/110 cam, which was a reasonable compromise, giving up some of that low-rpm tire-frying torque, in favor of a little more up top. Then re-gearing it to put the power back where I needed it to be.
See, a streeter has a very narrow window of operation, and we don't need to buck the wind at 100 to 120mph, cuz we never go there.Well almost never.
Power requirement increases as the sq of the speed. That means if you double the speed it takes 2^2 times as much power, or 4 times as much. By limiting ourselves to 60/65 we don't need mega power.
In the zero to 60 mph, traction is everything. Well traction and TM.But if your current combo spins the tires to 50 mph, you have already overpowered the chassis, and until you fix that, additional power is just bragging rights and shows how deep your pockets are.
I mean even a lowCr 318 stock long block with bolt-ons can spin tires most if not all the way thru first gear, with the right TM and a poor chassis.
Teeners are rated at what again? That's right, in 71 it was 230 hp/340 ftlbs
340 ftlbs might suck with 2.76s giving us just 340 x 2.76 x 2.45low=2299peak ft lbs out the axles, and this occuring at about 27 mph. With 4.10s this becomes 340x4.1x2.45=3415 ftlbs, and now at 18mph . This is about the same as a stock 440 with maybe 2.76/2.94s, and we all know what that will do to the tires. So; now you are getting somewhere. Traction and TM. Just my 2cents.