Reliability has been pretty good, although not that many of the cars are in the 50k+ range. The only major problem on the car is the Intercooler Pump which will rob you of power if it goes out. If you plan on modding the car it'll be neccessary to get a higher powered pump, notibly a Johnson CM30 pump that most of the modders have.

Getting into the low 12's isn't all that hard in these cars, in the winter (keep this in mind) if you don't use Nitrous. A 178mm (from ASP/Evosport), 181, or a 185 pulley (both from LET), with an Intake, Tune (Rob's Inmotion tune seems to be the best so far) and possibly an exhaust. I'm not sure if the Code3 Supercharger pulley has anyone in the low 12s yet (could be wrong) but it's the cheapest of the bunch and is equivalent in dyno's and boost as the 178. Rob from NeedsWings is currently making Intake Manifolds for the car that seem to pack quite a HP improvement.

If you decide to do the cooling upgrades it'll run about $550 (that's what I paid) for a Johnson pump, larger HE, and Phenolic spacers. The last 2 are subject to srutiny if you even need them but I got them anyway.

The only problem is once you start dipping under 12.5 or even 13's is the traction in these cars. You can get some Drag radials which are street tires (as you know) but if you want to use the stock PS2's or Conti's then you'll get traction issues once you start putting on the power. I've only broken the 2.0 60' time once in my Conti's @ stock pressure but the PS2's seem to be getting around a 1.8 time. Anyone here dragging their car for low 12's on this site is using a DR setup.

Break down of prices
Intake - $450 (NeedsWings), or cheaper if you do it yourself but in the same design
Crank Pulleys - $800 - $950
S/C Pulley - $650
Headers - $950 (LET), ~$1,300 (VRP)
Cooling mods - $550 - $600 (if you use the tuners sites) cheaper on your own
-----I/C pump alone - $130
Tune - $500 (Inmotion) , $800 (LET)
Exhaust - ~$600 - $700 <--- has to be custom, no kits for these cars, could be more or could be a lot less
Intake Manifolds - $1,500
Plugs - $90
DR Setup - ~$500 - $600

Wouldn't know about nitrous, not a fan of that stuff

Read up and do some searching on some modification threads there's a lot of info out there.