Building performance street cars that are ready to race and ready to show has been a favorite pastime of automobile-passionate hobbyists for decades. In fact, gear heads have been building performance street cars more or less since the car itself was invented. Building and racing high performance street cars is more popular today than ever!

Thinking about building a performance street car of your very own? Read on for the lowdown on what it takes to build a show stopping real deal.

First things first, every high performance street car should start with the fastest motor on the block. After all, what's a performance street car without the horsepower to make it really go? With some vehicle models, it's common to upgrade under the hood by dropping in a whole new engine. Other models are easily tuned and tweaked with high performance modifications and accessories.

Once satisfied with what's under the hood, the next thing about building performance street cars is balancing the power. Building performance street cars naturally means adding some serious horsepower and torque to the vehicle. With all of that newly found tire burning muscle, the other systems of the vehicle also need to be beefed up to compensate for the significant increase in motor performance.

A few questions to ask when building performance street cars from top to bottom include:

- Is the transmission strong enough to keep up?

- Are the brakes big enough and cool enough?

- Will the headers and exhaust system be too restrictive?

- Do the wheels and tires both look great and offer peak performance?

Mechanical performance is just one part of hotrodding. To put it all together, it's important to have the "go" and the "show" too. Why go to all of the trouble and hard work of building a performance street car if it won't look awesome too? Award winning show cars almost always win because they have the right combination of show and go. For many cars, body kits, edgy grills, and racy spoilers are a great way to enhance the overall look of the car. Just finish it all off with a great looking custom paint job.

Don't forget the interior. Building the best show-stopping performance street cars means not overlooking a single detail. This means that the original, stock interior needs a serious upgrade too. We're talking something big, not just the standby short throw shifter and new gauge faces. And whether customized or not, the upholstery and carpet should definitely be flawless for the ultimate performance ride.

Building performance street cars is a timeless hobby that requires tons of hard work and effort. Fortunately, it all pays off once the project is finished - both in the pride of accomplishment and the increased value of the vehicle.