probably easier for you to sell down the road too

 

You're probably going to have to do a little work up front to provide fender clearance for the tires 9" wheels will allow.

Regarding handling, it depends. On the street, I'd go 8" front/9" rear. For the track, I'd more likely go 9" all around, but I'd also fix the stock car's rear roll stiffness bias (i.e., stiffer front bar at least).

I disagree with the comment above regarding these cars understeering (at least the '00/'01 models). This is the only stock modern car I've driven that actually initially oversteers unless you are gentle with steering inputs. Mid-corner, it's remarkably neutral.

But the early AP1 does not suffer fools gladly. Get aggressive with steering inputs, or do something stupid like lifting when you start to feel the back end get loose, and you could easily find yourself going backward into a ditch or curb.

Going to a non-staggered same-width front/rear setup with stock suspension will make the car slightly more oversteery, exaggerating it's propensity to punish drivers with little/no experience at the limits of adhesion.

 

hah, 9" +45
You are going to have to do a lot of work to get them to fit properly and much more negative camber than OEM alignment suggests

 

^especially if you run 255s up front. Just to give you an idea I have the 17x9s all around with 255s. My front fenders are flared about as far as you can go before they start to look wavy and crappy. I have -2.5 up front and the wheels still poke out just a little bit. You'd probably need to run -3 or better before they actually sit inside the fenders.

 

 

Running a non-staggered setup with the same model and size tire all around is fine for auto-x or a tight road course where the ability to easily inducce oversteer can help you rotate the car around very tight tuns at relatively low speed. But the oversteer behavior is not for the uninitiated or drivers who have only run hard in FWD cars. The limits will be a lot higher than Dad's Accord or Mom's suv. But if you reach those limits and are unprepared you will end up off the road pointed in the direction you came from at best, or in a ditch or around a tree at worst. ESPECIALLY in a 00-01 model like the OP owns.

I would recommend anyone new to the car who doesn't have a lot of performance rwd driving experience stick with a staggered setup. You won't give up anything in most street maneuvers or when carving up that favorite canyon. And the handling will be more forgiving.

If you don't corner your car hard, stagger won't matter that much and running a wider front tire might produce a better steering response. It is really steering response that makes a car feel like it handles "like a go kart" or like it is "on rails". Absolute cornering grip, like horsepower, is harder to judge with a "butt dyno" than most people think. Without a G-meter or the ability to closely track speed through a particular corner and line, the difference in absolute grip has to be pretty large to detect. A lot of variables contribute to the perception of handling prowess: body roll, tendency toward oversteer/understeer, tire noise as the limits approach, ease of transition to break-away, etc.

For maximum grip it's all about the tires. On a car with a decent oem suspension no other suspension component upgrade will have as big an impact on grip, not shocks or springs or swaybars.

 

^^^ Knowledge right there