Car Stereos: 98 Sunfire - Aftermarket speakers for Kick Panels, bookshelf speakers, factory speakers

Question
Hello all,
I have a 1998 Pontiac Sunfire. I've had it for over a year and a half now. I had a Kenwood deck put in soon after buying the car and I'm finally thinking about upping the car to a full system, including replacing the factory speakers.
I was looking into component speakers for the kick panels, but not sure if they would work. They look like they would house component speakers but I haven't taken the door panels off to check. The speaker package I'm looking at for the doors is <a href="http://www.crutchfield.com/S-Tr0SY4nIdXa/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?g=400&I=113KFCP507">here (Via Crutchfield)</a>. Would they work without having to buy aftermarket kick panels?
Thanks,
Mike

Answer
You would be looking at a custom installation either way... Kick pods are always best if you are looking for any sort of realistic front sound stage. The real trick to providing realistic sound staging is making every effort to ensure the arrival times from left to right are as closely matched as possible...not an easy feat in a vehicle where you are seated off center. The kick panels are usually the closest you are going to get to time alignment without serious vehicle modifications or high end horn loaded front speakers like Waveguides tm.
Get yourself a little pair of bookshelf speakers, hook them up to a good sound source and place them down on the floor. Now spend some time experimenting with the angles you are pointing them.. listen for a nicely balanced center image.. (make sure you have reference music that you know well and that has a clearly defined sound stage when you listen on your home system.) Measure the angles and positions and when your ready to make your kick panels, duplicate the angles you found with the little speakers.
If you don't care about soundstage and just want some better speakers in the front, the speakers you chose for the doors should work just fine.