Coil Over vs Torsion Bar

This discussion reminds me of a passage I read in the Mopar Chassis manual... basically it said that it's almost impossible to design and build your own race car chassis and suspension with superior geometry and function compared to a factory setup. They made the example where if you removed a bunch of weight from a stock Mopar for racing, put on some racing tires, good shocks, maybe some stiffer springs, and a good alignment you'll have a car that's as good as or better than 95% of the other cars on the track. Chrysler engineers spent serious time and money developing that suspension back in the day and you'd basically have to be a professional custom racing chassis builder to make something better. BUT that was written about 25 years ago, things surely have changed in the aftermarket but the factory Mopar suspension is still hard to beat once you correct the minor flaws: overly soft factory spring rates, flimsy upper control arms, not enough caster, sub-par weld quality on the k-members... really not that difficult or expensive to fix if you're handy.

I personally would only consider a coilover front end if A) I was swapping in an engine and had NO header clearance or B) I was building a full-on 10/10ths road-race machine to compete in the higher classes (and SOMEHOW reached a limit with T-bars). Aside from those two scenarios the Mopar torsion bar suspension has more potential than I think I'll ever use.