OK guys, I'm officially still looking.
I flew to Tampa and looked at 2 cars, neither of which I came home with. I looked at a 98 LSC, Red with Black interior, Octastars, 71k miles. Absolutely gorgeous car that looked like it was 6 months old inside, outside, and under the hood. Drove nice and tight, everything worked perfectly. At this point you are wondering why I didn't come home with it. When I looked underneath, I saw some crusty rust on the driver side floopan. As I crawled around looking, I kept finding rust. There is a pan right underneath at the back of the car that has kind of slotted areas in it...it was falling apart with rust. At that point I told the guy I couldn't buy it. He asked if he could knock off some money and let me get it fixed...I told him he couldn't drop the price enough to make it worth selling it to me. He immediately offered to knock off $1000, and when I told him that wasn't even close I think he realized I was serious. I had him take me back to the airport, and got another guy to come get me with another MK8 for sale. He picks me up and we drive about 10 mins down the road and stop for gas. I popped the hood to start looking, and immediately realized someone had tried to clean under the hood with the wrong kind of cleaner. All the aluminum was white and patchy. He spoke up and said he had "degreased" under the hood some. Next thing I saw was the drivers side front fender stuck out about 1/8" more than the door did. I looked closer and realized it had been painted on at some point. It had paintwork from the nose back to about the 3/4 point on both front doors where the blending stopped. He tossed me the keys and asked if I wanted to drive. I had to break the news and tell him what I saw, and asked him to drive me back to the airport.
When I got back to the airport, the Red car was still on my mind. It was sooooooo damn nice I couldn't quit thinking about it. I called the guy back and asked if he knew where a lift was we could use to look underneath to see if it was really as bad as i thought or I was overreacting. He comes back to the airport and gets me, and we go to his local mechanic and we put it on the lift. It was worse than I thought. Everything from rotting brake lines, seams on the gas tank, etc were rotting away. There is one bracket under the car that looked like surface rust, but when I pushed on it with my finger, that spot caved in and crumbled. He took me back to the airport needless to say, and I managed to catch a flight home and make it back the same day I left.
Sooooooo, I am still looking. If I have to up how much I spend to get the right car, so be it. I want something I'll be proud to own. Oh, both cars I looked at today had black interior and I loved it. Looks VERY different from any pics I've seen. I wanted to say thanks again to Wicked_LS for going and checking out the one I wanted looked at.
