Haha, well since you went there I don't see why you would buy all new internals and blow BIG buck for a 302 when a 350 could make the same power with less than half the money on stock internals and you wouldn't have to crank it to high heavens. The 350 will live longer especially the valvetrain because you won't have to run as much lift or see as many rpm's. When you spend that much money on an engine I would think you would want to get as much power out of the application as you could get across the powerband. Up until some time (tuning) ago I was getting great traction in all gears and I'm still running 195/70/14's. With a pair of halfway decent tires I personally would get amazing traction. In general once you get these Z's to squat (atleast the later ones) traction is pretty impressive. If it doesn't then the peddle is how you get the desired traction. Having too much power is not a problem. Anyway let's not start an argument, I'm just stating my opinion as you have yours and I respect that.
WITH THAT SAID, I like how you're going about building this engine and it sounds like it will be a blast.