do what you can. you're not gonna do a swap first if you can't afford it. if your goal is just to make it look clean, i'd go with a clean drop with some nice (16") rims. it's pretty hard to make an automatic even a little faster without somewhat of a major thing (supercharger, turbo, nitrous, swap). i know because my old car was an automatic. i'm sure you could do it, but (in my opinion) it's just not worth it.