I'm on the west side of madison (till I move to chicago later this month), let me know if you'd like to meet up. There's even a few SR's in this town.
Funny, my boss is a die hard VW head. Just sold his Corrado to get the first 337 in madison. I got to drive it and it sure is fun. My friend has a 1.8t golf with a .9bar chip and it sure does scoot. If I could afford a new car VW's would get some serious looking, though I would probably rule it out due to fwd.
As for good all seaosn tires I can only tell you tires to avoid. Really there is no comparison to a dedicated set of snow tires for driving in the winter, especially when whatever all seasons you buy will likely be summer biased. Honestly, winter tires can be picked up for fairly cheap and are more than worth the money spent once it snows. Then you'll have from now till April to save for another set (or get some for chirstmas, maybe everyone in your family could buy you one tire till you have a set <img src="http://www.zilvia.net/f/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif" border="0" valign="absmiddle" alt='
'> ).