Thought I'd better add a quick post to the thread - incredible to see it up to 15 pages!
I'm the happy buyer of Bing's Zed - after swinging one way and then the other over the manual vs auto, I finally decided the car looked just too nice not to go and have a look at it... and as predicted by others on this thread, it really is in amazing condition and has clearly been looked after extremely well! As for the automatic, I really enjoyed driving it and it definitely seems to suit the nature of the engine (which also sounds superb!) 8) All in all I can't wait to pick it up at the weekend. Our plan for the summer is to take it down to Italy via the Alps, so will be sure to post some pics from the trip on the forum...
In the immediate future I'll need to sort out some insurance for it, so might start another thread on that over in the general area - would be very interested in people's experience and advice of insuring cars that have been lightly modified like this one (springs and a few cosmetic changes) - particularly where starting with a new insurance policy like I will be here, rather than modifying the car yourself and then just informing your insurer...