A little late to the party here, but I thought I'd mention that I am #9 on Pete's C5Fest autocross list with my bone stock 1LE.
I have been very impressed with how good the 1LE is out of the box, and JusticePete's list is full of great ideas for improvement.
After the C5Fest, I did a couple of road course events and more autocrosses. Before going to the road course, I added front brake ducts, stainless brake lines, racing brake fluid, and Hawk racing brake pads. I highly recommend more aggressive pads for any competitive driving (autox or road course). The increased bite really helps to get the decel rate up quickly, and for a road course the higher temp capability is a good safety factor. Even for autocross, the added bite really helped, and I had less trouble with the ABS (still occasionally get ice mode, but at C5Fest with stock pads it was really slowing me down).
Overall the handling of the car has been great, and I've been very impressed with the Goodyears (especially on a road course, they're not ideal for autox because they need to be hot to really stick).
For 2014 I'm going to step it up a notch to try to get closer to the front of the pack at the muscle car and USCA events. I'm upgrading to a full Detroit Speed/JRi suspension package, LG Super Pro headers, CAI, wheels/tires TBD (probably BFG Rivals), other power mods TBD (cam at a minimum).
I don't have anything to add about the bushings yet, until I get some experience with them myself. JusticePete and JDP know what they're doing, so listening to them is a good idea...
