I will go against what everyone on here said and say this:

SPRING CUTTING IS NOT AS BAD AS PEOPLE THINK!!!

I bet half the people that tell you not to cut/heat springs have never done it themselves. They only go by word of mouth. My Grand Am is the FIRST car I've ever had (out of 13 cars) that I did NOT lower by way of heating. I heat the springs of my first car back in 1987 and rode like that for 4 years. No problems. Every car after that, I completely took the springs all the way off and rode struts. I even won the Atlanta Region SCCA championship in two years on heated springs on my Neon. And it was a daily driver. Put 216,000 miles on that car on the factory spring/strut combo with the springs heated the day I bought it. I have NEVER had a suspension related issue due to doing this.

But notice I have said heated this whole time. I don't like cutting because the ride is worse. In my experiences, I've always had good riding cars after a good heating job. Plus you don't have to take anything off the car when you heat.

Spring heating is not the best way to go, but it's not nearly as bad as people (some inexperienced or uninformed) try to say it is. But if you can afford to buy lowered springs, by all means, do so first. Choose what you will, but remember, you can take the word of someone who has only been into cars for a couple of years who's never done this or the word of someone who has been lowering cars for 20 years and has done nothing but this. Also, I can't guarantee that you won't have problems, but odds are, you won't. If you do do this, don't expect to run out and take car and race it everywhere. Doing this as long as I have, I knew how my car worked and handled, so I was able to do SCCA. If you want to race, get springs. If you're just cruising, nohing wrong with the propane. Later, QD.