Our poison of choice was a 91 Volvo 740 Wagon, it was a free car. Automatic and NA initially. Our goal was the same as yours starting out, get on track, stay and track, and complete a race. We finished Charlotte and besides being blown off the banks by the nascar pit crews in their thundering monte carlos (we topped out at 93MPH heh) we had a blast. Then we turbo charged it and manual swapped it and havent finished a race since haha. Did manage to complete 11hrs at daytona though.
My suggestion is find a way to get full life out of your tires. This means proper roll control so you arent eating the outside shoulders and proper camber. Find ways to make these things happen. Chump is supposed to be affordable racing but uneven wear will kill perfectly good tires. We are still searching for chump "legal" solutions to gaining the camber we need without incurring to many points.
Got camber bolts for the struts. They were $13 on Amazon. Going to dial in a stupid amount of camber front and rear and see at the first autocross of the year. That should tell us how far over it rolls. Thinking 2.5-3.0* up front and at least 2.0* in the rear.
Tires for us will be 195/55 and 205/50 size tires. Going for the 200tw to start but can go higher in the tw department if we are chewing through tires too fast. The UHP tires usually dont last very long though on track and ive corded a few BFG Sport Comp 2's going balls out in a Mustang. Wouldnt want that to happen in a shitbox Hyundai with terribly tiny brakes.
We are limited to whats available at the moment under our budget. So it was a set of Tiburon struts and some H&R springs. At a later time, maybe late this year or early next year we will see about cutting the perch tops and making our own coilover setup using a set from another car. For now though the H&R's should give us some useable spring rate increase as the factory is like riding a giant marshmallow. We can also go to Tiburon Koni Yellow inserts down the line if the spring rate is good but the damping rates are still too shallow. They are the cut-a-strut type so a few hours work to get them in.