To lower or not to lower???

You won't be able to lower the car a full inch without making some changes to your suspension. To be successful, you'll need to do at least a couple of things:

- Bigger torsion bars. When you lower the car, you reduce the amount of available suspension travel. With the stock torsion bars and bump stops you're pretty much stuck with stock ride height unless you don't mind hitting the bump stops ALL the time. If you increase the size of the torsion bars, you reduce the amount of suspension travel needed, so you can lower the car accordingly. For example, if you double the wheel rate, you can roughly halve the amount of suspension travel. The stock torsion bars are almost inadequate for even the stock ride height, which is why the stock bump stops are progressive, they were part of the suspension travel design.

-Offset UCA bushings. Changing the ride height in either direction changes your alignment. In order to maintain a proper alignment with a lowered car, you'll probably need offset UCA bushings. Those will allow you to adjust for the changes that occur when you lower the car, as well as to use more modern alignment specs (NOT the factory specs, which were intended for bias plys and are WRONG for radials).

Lowering the car actually improves suspension geometry. It results in a better camber curve and reduces bump steer, which was pretty good originally. So, not only do you get better handling because of a lowered center of gravity, you get better performance from your suspension as well. As long as you take the necessary actions of replacing your torsion bars and getting a proper alignment.

Avoid drop spindles, especially to lower the car only 1". The drop spindles available are all a 2" drop, which, when used to lower the car only 1", will actually make the suspension geometry worse than stock. The resulting geometry of using a 2" drop spindle to lower the car 1" is essentially the same as RAISING your car an inch in terms of the control arms angles, etc. Using a 2" drop spindle to lower the car 2" maintains the factory control arms angles/geometry, which negates the improvements that lowering the car has on the suspension geometry. Not to mention that for the price of any of the drop spindles available you could buy a new set of torsion bars, better shocks, pay for your new alignment, and have a MUCH better handling car when you're done.