I flew in an RV8 recently. It's OK but ..... hmmm .... rather basic! There are little holes everywhere and it's very draughty. It handles very nicely but one cannot pretend it's a go-places plane. Le Touquet is about it unless you are a hard case
I dread to think what you'd think about my open cockpit, taildragging, 60 knot Slingsby T31m then?
.... Then again, I doubt you'd be seen dead flying such a backward crate
The RV range are super, and very "go places" for non IFR. How can anyone say otherwise? Anything capable of 200mph is IMHO pretty useful for touring and funnily enough many seem to be the choice of ATPL's for flying outside the "office", so can't be bad? A full IFR equipped aircraft in your price range would be pretty cr@p in comparison and probably even less worthy of the "I'm considerably wealthier than you" IO540
SS