Chassis

The Daytona chassis is based on the K-car. Yes, the lowly Reliant, which although it helped Chrysler avoid bankruptcy, was a pretty crappy car. Much work was done to tune the various pieces for an optimum balance between performance and ride. The 87 Daytona Shelby Z, with its stock 225/50VR15 Gatorbacks can hold .89g on the skidpad, and has uncommonly good transient response. There is a small amount of body roll, which is accounted for in the suspension geometry. Four wheel disc brakes provide fade-free stops, and power gets to the ground via the front wheels.

Chrysler's turbo cars had equal-length driveshafts, which dramatically reduced the effects of "torque steer". Torque steer is what makes your front wheel drive car veer off in all directions during heavy acceleration, and there are ways to reduce it further.

The front suspension is a fully independent MacPherson strut type. This is a good news / bad news design. The good news is, it had excellent travel, provides useful feedback to the driver, is structurally solid, and is easy to assemble at the factory. The bad news is, it is extremely difficult to perform service without expensive equipment, and almost impossible to alter the geometry beyond what the factory intended.

The rear suspension is a trailing arm solid axle. This also offers a good news / bad news situation. The bad news is, it's heavy, not very structurally solid, and often has the rear tires in undesirable positions relative to the road. The good news is, even an excellent independent system would probably make very little difference in handling, since most work on a FWD car is at the front.

Plain and simply, there are very few things you can do to improve the handling on a Daytona Shelby Z, mostly because it is excellent to begin with. Replace the shocks and struts if you can't remember when it was last done, and use the good stuff.

1987 and 1988 Daytonas share most components, and there is a serious deficiency in the rear disc brakes for these two years. Simply, parts are exceedingly rare, expensive, and the park brake mechanism in the calipers tends to seize. One major improvement you can perform is to replace the rear calipers with those from an 89 or later Daytona. These are much easier to get, one sixth the price, more rugged, and feature vented rotors.