any recommendations on brand and type would be greatly appreciated. Since will only be doing it once or twice in the car life, don't mind spending to get the best performance.
Go with the OEM Iridium plugs - you'll only change them once. I got 200,000 miles out of a set of these on my Maxima, and after pulling them out found I probably could have gotten another 50,000 out of them before they went bad.