Another non-Mopar car discussion; '94 5.0 Stang

A good friend of mine bought a very clean 1994 Mustang GT 5.0L Automatic a few weeks ago. It has a cold-air intake and nice sounding header-back exhaust but is otherwise stock. He prefers Mopar but doesn't have the technical skills to maintain a classic car which is why he went with a late-model Mustang. He was looking at a few and I recommended he go with one that has a 5.0 instead of the 4.6 because I've heard it's not much better of an engine and the 5.0 is a much more conventional old-school V8. The exhaust has a wonderful rumble and it is very smooth going down the road at high speed; pulls decent at speed too. Only problem...

IT HAS NO TORQUE!!! lol I could not get the tires to spin no matter how hard I tried; my stock 4.0L Jeep Cherokee could cream it from a stop. I've done some research and supposedly this model year has very tame ignition and A/F specs from the factory, pulling timing out during shifts and when accelerating from a stop. My recommendation to him is to first get a programmer/chip that will bump up the timing to where it should be for good performance, also to firm up the shifts because that AOD shifts like it's full of molasses. Any of you FABO'ers have experience with this generation of 5.0 Mustangs? I also recommended a gear swap to 3.73's because stock is 3.08 which I feel is absolutely ridiculous considering it has a 0.67 overdrive; the engine is barely spinning at highway speeds as it is.:wack: What do you guys think?