Not drag, downforce. The point of the wing is to create aerodynamic downforce. Not just for corners, also for high-speed stability. Drag is a side effect of downforce, and that's where a lot of setup issues come from.

However the wings you see a lot of these guys using are ridiculously large. A small upswept lip on the trunklid/hatch is all that is needed to sufficiently stick the car at the speeds these cars work in. If you want to keep a faster car stuck down at high speed, then an airfoil that is large, and mounted high up in the air stream is what you are looking for.
A good example of that would be the Mustang Cobra R. The wing on that bad boy was put there by a wind-tunnel engineer, not a stylist.

Now to respond to the rest of that....

For the most part, the people who hook up cars don't know their head from their ass, and it's very evident. A lot of what you said is very true, but there were a few little things that I took exception to.

The first is that while Civics, Accords and the like are made to be economy cars, they are all not just econo boxes. The suspension and chassis of a Civic are race-derived. There is a fine line between a race car and an econo car, when it comes to matters other than powerplant. Even then, the parallels are amazing. They both have mainly the same goals when it comes to construction, tuning is where the two deviate.

Second, Celicas and Integras are sports cars, and are sold as such. Mind you, they are low-end, and more budget-minded, but sports cars nonetheless.


Okay, enough of that.

Jeff, the best FTP client for X so far is transmit. It should be on the CD.