Let me be the first to welcome you to the forum.
About your install, do you plan to install everything yourself?
In my mind you can get an awesome sounding system by using either the stock locations or kickpanels. You just need to decide what you over all goal of your system is.
As far as head units go, I have to throw out my recommendation for the
Pioneer Premier PRS880. For the price, you can not beat all of the features that you get in this unit and the SQ is great!
I would really just recommend that you read as much as you can in this forum and other's like it, and then go out and listen to as many of the speaker/ head units/amps that you can to find out what you like the sound of.
Just make sure to take some music you are really familiar with, and set all of the headunit EQ lvls to flat when doing your listening test.
Here is another great website to start out with...
http://www.bcae1.com