forget about "potential owner" and just snatch it! especially at a discount from family
once an owner, leave all dreams of making power at the door. you can make it breathe a bit better but getting any serious power out of these engines is costly and makes reliability worse.
you can however get some really nice sound out of it. for exhaust i recommend the "Pedro" mod which is basically a bypass on the OEM muffler. Also, remove the second set of catalytic converters so you get better flow, more noise and some nice crackle and pops on overrun. If you google it or search the forum you'll find plenty of info. You can also send me a PM on here, happy to help if you go down that way. I'm in Miami if you're coming down to S FL.
I have the Fister mod (similar to Pedro mod) + replacing second set of cats with Top Speed cat delete pipes (you can put any kind of cheap pipes, these were about $150) and this is how it sounds on my car:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1Efeluufu8&feature=youtu.be
I have a 2000 2.7l so it's the same as your car.
The cheapest exhaust mod is prob the Top Speed (or similar) exhaust for about $300, and again i would recommend doing second cat delete. Some people have that exhaust and are happy with it. Personally i had bad experience with it, i went through 2 of them in 2 months and they both started to rattle and had a bit of drone, they are really light. Maybe i got a couple of duds..
I think Pedro mod + cat delete is the sweet spot moneywise and soundwise. I believe there was a guy on the forum that sold the already cut bypass pipes, you'd just go to a muffler shop and have them weld them on.
Good luck with it!
Cristian