Loved the thing to death. It just wasn't the best car to take on 1000+ mile trips. Bolstering was pretty aggressive and it just didn't have a ton of space for more than two people. Third gear in that little bastard was unreal though. It pulled HARD all the way from 30 MPH to 110MPH. Once you hit about 60 MPH in 3rd gear, there's not a lot of cars out there that can hang with you.
I looked at buying an '02 1.8t but VW's shifters are getting pretty sloppy. Way to much travel on the clutch and the stick itself was pretty mushy feeling. It was a big difference between what I was used to in my '95.