Solarian clearly spoke about cost:
“will be the best bang for your buck”, and yes it will but that statement clearly means saving money by cutting corners.
Also most of the post was about preventing fade, something you won’t get unless you are driving hard. Doesn’t necessarily have to be “track” but if you are fading your brakes it’s because your are driving pretty damn hard.
So if you just drive on the street and the way you are driving on the street isn’t causing any fade or other problems then stock is fine, pads, calipers rotors, all of it.
If you track your car you can ‘make do’ with nice pads with stock setup, the price you pay is chewing through expensive pads VERY quickly as well as warping rotors and more frequent brake fluid changes. It wouldn’t take long before you would have been better off buying a larger setup that required less force (thus less wear) to slow you down…
If you’re upgrading your pads or brakes you probably already have better tires which would allow you to take advantage of more brake torque than before.
So it still comes out the same
Cheap and sub-par to ‘make do’
or Baller and excellent for those taking things seriously…
I should point out I just have a cheap 180sx/SE-R brakes with HAWK HPS pads and not a baller setup so I’m not trying to justify my own purchases.