nah, i disagree. i'm not talking about buying huge money shocks to tame high spring rates, i pointed out the 800/600 as an example of high spring rates not dictating harsh ride. progressive springs are not wise as the dampers are not progressive -in conjunction-. you want a shock that is valved to handle the spring rate range you're looking at. konis for example are best in the 300-500lb range, with 550lb being their recommended upper limit. konis also have lower high speed compression, which handles bumps/potholes better than the japanese shocks like KYB - japanese roads are incredibly well maintained and potholes/uneven surfaces aren't really an issue there - most japanese shocks have higher high-speed compression resistance. the adjustments or ride-affecting factors are not as simple as how soft or hard your shock settings are - each shock design yields a different response curve - they are not linear through the range of shaft travel or linear over the range of shock shaft compression speed, however they Are designed for linear spring rates, with the exception of some coilover setups where the valving is tailored to the progressive spring used in that application. a much better approach to buying springs and shocks is to first determine if you can afford a properly valved, tested-and-tuned-on-your-model-car coilover setup, like RRE's custom valved JIC FLT-A2 setup. Most of us can't, or don't want/need to spend $1800 on suspension. That being the case, look at the best shock you can afford, before buying springs. Get something like a Koni or Bilstein with lower high-speed compression resistance for our crappy roads. Run them on stock springs, get a feel for the car. Put on your thicker rear swaybar, get a feel for how much it lessened understeer. Look at your stock spring rates, and the ratio of front to rear rate. Adjust the ratio, stiffening the rear in proportion to the front, to move the car from heavily understeering to a somewhat more neutral balance. Don't go overboard, cause you're driving on the street and you don't want to spin when you push too far (like an S2000 does with stiffer springs), understeering is safer. With a 1" rear bar and stock front, I found 500f/350r a good compromise between understeering and spinning if I push too hard on a cloverleaf
dunno, just what i've learned playing around. i tried a handful of spring rates in the rear, you can get hyperco springs for like 50 bucks and it's easy to swap them out to test. just make sure if you get ground controls you don't get the GC front upper mounts. You'll want different front upper mounts than stock for sure, you gain about an inch of travel by changing them out, but you'll want something like RRE's spherical bearing upper mounts, as in the front when turning there are side loads on the shock shaft, it needs play to do more than point straight up. The lower the car, the more side load there is, and that can kill shocks.