More opinions: 1) Any brand amp will do. Alpine is "better" than Jensen, but most "non-audiophiles" could not tell the difference in a blind comparison of sound quality.

2) Both too much power and too much distorted signal will blow a speaker. With your factory speakers, you will hear funny sounding noises coming from the speakers only after you turn them up to a high volume. This is the limitations of the speakers, not the amp. It would be you ignoring the odd noises coming from the speakers that might blow them, not the amp itself. Only when you were pushing the limits of the amp would the quality of the amp come into play, and it sounds like you won't get any amp to that level.

3) Features for you may be more important than anything else. You will need to decide how many speakers you wish to run, if you want a sub someday, etc. This will tell you how much power you want, how many channels you want, if you want a crossover or throughput built in, etc. I'd talk to a stereo shop you trust to see what options you think you want. Crutchfield catalogs also do a good job explaining some of these terms.

4) New speakers are usually the biggest improvement you can make, but in your case with only using the Empeg, you need an amp too. I guess you knew that though. Almost any outboard amp is better than what’s in a head unit, true.

5) I don’t have much recommendations here, if $200 is a lot to you for stereo equipment. I guess I spent 10 times that already and I’m not done yet, so any other opinions I have are going to be heavily biased. But I’d say get a great amp, do it once, and own it for a very long time.

(warning huge picture sizes) http://www.sallee.org/greg/Eclipse/Eclipse.htm