Sorry, I didn't mean to derail your enthusiasm for autocross and/or car modding. I went into it 7 years ago with the same attitude as you, and started buying parts to make my car what I wanted it to be, only to realize I was shooting myself in the foot when it came to being competitive.

You can have a cheap, competitive autocross car, or you can have a cool, fun, expensive, non-competitive autocross car. Think of it this way: you can turn your civic dx into a really nice, prepped track car with $10k worth of mods in it (about what my civic has)... but it's unlikely you'll be competitive in SM. Or you can buy an 88 crx Si (or any other cheap autox-friendly junker), put some decent tires and shocks on it and be competitive in H-stock.

Either way, you'll get plenty of personal enjoyment, and you'll learn a lot along the way. If I had to start over from scratch, I'd go the cheap route h: