Well this is opening a can of worms I know, but for quick cars for road use which disk and pad combination give the best compromise of stopping power, wear, lifespan, dust levels etc?

I have been looking for a few weeks now and you can spend serious money (without even looking at big brake kits) I am happy with what i have but if there is a proven better product then come replacement time I may be tempted

There are some mad products out there and some that i can't believe can possibly be better (http://www.rotordiscs.com/ for example) are more grooves better? drilled, semi drilled, curvy grooves straight grooves how can you possibly make an informed choice?

discs dont matter really, just choose the ones you prefer the look of. there are many different patterns but the drilled and grooved crap is only there to prevent glazing (and in theory help with cooling).

brake effort is dictated by the pad material. there are several brands with very similar products using very similar pad materials, as long as you avoid the boyracer crap like greenstuff then you'll be fine, although even greenstuff is adequate if you can live with the wear rate.

i find bog standard QH pads do just as good a job as black diamond or red dot etc. the box they come is isnt as pretty but the box doesnt stop the car so why does that matter?

for the road you dont need pads capable of taking a million degrees, plus you dont want pads that only work well once you get them hot. many of the "fast road" or "race" or "sports" pads suffer in the cold.

I use Red Dot pads because in all the years I have doing my work I have not found anything better for a decent price.

All my customers I switched on to Red Dot pads have not looked back.

In a number of independent test they showed the least pedal pressure needed and usually do not suffer from squeeling.

The grooved discs showed improvements because of the deglasing.

6 groove discs actually performed better than the 20 groove discs.

Red Dot has 5 different compounds on offer as standard and can have more specialised compounds on demand.

If more info is required feel free to pm me.

On Red Dot we can offer a minimumm off 25% of list and when group buys organised some more discount is possible.

We can also offer lettering (grooves) on the discs such as 'fiatforum.com'.