Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.
Oddone, I take your point about the physical/W&B limitations.
Flybmi, I did make the case for the PA38, saying....
"Piper designed the PA38 to be their ab initio trainer, based on a large scale survey of flight instructors, despite the PA28 having been in production for some time - perhaps you may wonder why they did that?"
However, the student I was debating with replied....
t is well know that the PA 38 was the result of a demand for a very cheap trainer, nothing more nothing less.