In my scour to find the right car I was on eBay, piston heads, here obviously and also gum tree. I was within an ace of buying a black manual 3door in London, that is still up for only 8.5k but it needed a little bit of bodywork seeing to, mileage was good though at under 50thou. Just checked, still there. if anyone's watching that I did a lot of background on it and it seems a good buy. (Pm me if you are contemplating it, I'm not involved in its sale don't worry).
I went for DSG in the end, like it but I still keep going for the gear stick whenever I go to reverse!
The thing that's holding me back from going mad modifying this is the VW warranty, don't want to invalidate that but they seem such robust cars, I'm sure someone must have had engine failure but I've not personally heard of it yet.
