rebuilding a rebuilt slant

I plan on driving the car ad much ad possible. Right now it's a daily driver, when I was younger the motors I built with my dad were real conservative. He was all about building something practical, smoothly idle, good cold starts, nothing with headers. Now it's my turn to build a lumpy rough idling car to have fun with. If I wanted to be practical I would buy a Japanese import. I'm not building a race car but I definitely want something more wild than mild.