For a daily driver, that isn't regularly driven hard, just some fun on the weekends, would Springs be sufficient?

I know coilovers will obviously perform better than springs on stock shocks, but they cost much more too. I have front/rear sways on already, and cornering has been much improved. If i'm just looking for a good lookin' drop and a slight handling improvement, would some Eibach Sportlines do me justice?

Let me mention that the roads are very very very bad around here too....

 

For 99.99999999% of people springs are a WAY better choice. If you aren't willing to corner weight your car, there is almost 0 benefit to running coilovers other than the fact that they look cool. Anything Eibach makes will be a super high quality product, with a 1,000,000mi warranty, IMO most people would be best served with a set of good springs (Eibach, H&R) and some good dampers (Koni Yellow, Tokico Illumina).

Jon

 

How does springs on stock shocks affect the longevity of the shocks? Will it suffer?

 

They should still last a decent amount of time. Although the Sportline's move your dampers out of their optimum range (lower with a higher spring rate), they are not so drastic as to cause an immediate or catastrophic failure. They should last at least long enough for Koni to come out with their sport shocks for the FA/FG.

Jon