People always do what they’re going to do, but here’s my two cents:
The shock towers on these cats allow for more suspension travel and better geometry doing it. Removing them eliminates a lot of good suspension options, and a lot of important bracing. You can ‘fix’ the problems by adding more bracing, but like any engineering solution, there are compromises.
In the quest for ultimate power, you can make it in a lot of different ways. By the time you get up over 750 hp or so, your breakeven costs for any powerplant start to look about the same. I’ve never been happy with the design of the mod motors myself. They’re bulky, make a lot of sludge due to the head design, and while, with proper maintenance, they can be reliable in stock form, I have never been impressed. The aftermarket engineering that’s gone into Windsors for the last 50 years really pays off. With an aluminum block and some good heads, a 9.5" deck Windsor has no trouble keeping up with any of the overhead cam engines, on boost or off. It is smaller, lighter, and typically produces torque from a lower RPM range as well, which is great for a street car. Running a N/A 427 smallblock instead of a turbo setup with less cubic inches means zero turbo lag too, but honestly, at the power levels you’re looking at, it’s not as if a delay in power would save your tires. I’m a big fan of crisp throttle response, though, and that means supercharging or N/A. You’ll hear a lot of people say things like “There’s virtually no turbo lag!”, but that’s always going to be a lie. There’s a vast difference between “Now” and “1/2 second from now”, when you mash the go pedal.
Or, for that matter, going with something truly earthshaking like an all-aluminum John Kaase Boss engine could be cool too, if you’re filthy rich.
Don’t forget, no matter what you do with the engine, you need to worry about your unibody frame, and getting traction to the rear tires as much as possible, not to mention how it’s going to behave in inclement weather, or in stop-and-go traffic.
In the end, you need to really ask yourself where you are going to be driving your car. If it’s just a street beast, any of these choices are overkill. If you want to win at the track, decide if you want to just go in straight lines, or around curves. Envision exactly how you’re going to use it, before you start tearing everything up, or you may end up making choices you wish you hadn’t.
It all depends on what you intend to do with your car, and what you feel excited about. Not to mention how deep your pockets are!
