In Canada, use www.kanetix.com to get a few online insurance quotes. I'm paying $1000/year for my P5.

I'm traditionally a VW man also -- my last car was an '00 Jetta VR6. I miss the luxury quality, comfortable ride, good stereo and fantastic engine of the Jetta, but I don't miss the higher payments, higher gas usage, soft handling and ponderous feel that it had. For highway driving the Jetta was far better, hands down, but my driving is mostly suburban or country roads, low speeds, and the P5's crisp handling and direct control feel make even that kind of driving fun.

I wanted a five-door hatch that was fun to drive, but when VW took away the Golf 1.8T for 2002 that sent me looking elsewhere. The P5's economy car roots are pretty obvious but the low price and what you get more than make up for it.

 

Well, I just got back from a test drive. First, I should say that I test drove the new Honda Civic SiR yesterday. That car's ride is nice and firm, steering feel and shifter/tranny is top notch. I also love the seats.

Enter the P5.

The shifter falls short of SiR's precise short throws and perfect placement. That said, it is by no means disapointing. The throws are long but precise so it's easy to do quick gear changes. However, I did notice that once in gear the shifter moves a tiny bit according to the accelerator beat, which adds a bit of vagueness feeling if you rest your hand on the ****.
The steering is excellent. It's far from overboosted and has nice feedback from the wheels and the road.
The engine power is very linear. The engine seems to be happy around 4000rpm and beyond that it was just noisy with no particular power effect to back it up.

The build quality is excellent. I went around and examined all trim lines and couldn't find a flaw. The cargo space with seats down is huge! But that is proably the least important feature.

Overall, the car satisfies all of my current requirements and I loved it!

This will make the long post even longer, but the deal maker/breaker on getting this (or any) new car might be the insurance.
See, I moved to Canada 6 years ago and while I had my full license for 6 years now, I had Canadian one for only 4 years. The result: two companies I called so far won't even insure me. One of them tried hard to earn my business and finally came up with CDN$3,400 a year!!!
And, no I can't put my mom as primary driver because she came to Canada a year after I did. So despite her driving for over 25 years, she has been licensed in Canada for only 4 and that's all that counts.
Anyway, I'll call around some more tomorrow.

 

Well, I did decide to get the Midnight Blue. However, as I stated above, I'm still waiting to see about the insurance.

I want my P5!!!!!