1994 Marathon rebuild - Wanting some opinions/advice

[Arkie_3_fan]

Well, I've done my fair share of reading and looking and thought that I'd go ahead and ask a few questions now.
I've got a 1994 Marathon with some badly rusted battery trays. So bad that I'm going to take the body off of it to make sure that all the repairs can be properly made. The new battery trays and whatever else is repaired, will be repainted and most likely sprayed with some sort of rubber underbody coating or bedliner type spray to help protect things from corrosion.
My plans also include installing some new batteries at some point, depending on what I decide to do with my cart.
Here's where it gets interesting... See, my wife and I have a baby on the way (Due in March) and converting my cart to a decent trail machine for the 3 of us to use on the hunting lease would be nice and much cheaper than buying a Polaris Ranger or something of that nature. But, our cart is the slowest one of the golf course and has been for the three years that we've had it. The batteries have always held up for 18+ holes with no noticeable drop in performance but I'm sure it's getting about time to replace them.
I've read a few posts from people that say that particular model cart is notorious for being a slow poke. I'm not 100% sure of how true this is, but I know it certainly applies to my cart.
No matter if I put it in the woods or keep it on the golf course, I want to do something to speed it up a little. Should I be looking to go all out and upgrade the motor and controller or will 4ga. cables (currently running 4ga on the batteries and 6ga to the controllor) and HD bus bars work well enough?
My thought is that it would be nice to turn this rig into a trail machine (just minimum lift and tires is all that's needed for my location) and then pick up a gas cart for my golfing purposes... but if the Marathon isn't nearly as well suited as some other models for using in the woods, then maybe I should just build it up for use on the golf course and look elsewhere for a more suitable cart model or used side by side ATV for my hunting needs.
Any thoughts, advice, etc... is welcome.
Thanks in advance.