Keep 'em coming! All these pics are starting to get me excited again... I don't know why as we've still got a LONG wait!
I like the grey one - I had a grey ED30!
I always wanted to put black wheels on my ED30, but I didn't think they'd go.
For me, black wheels need to contrast the car... so they need to be on a light car.
White, silver, red all look

Even yellow cars (which I'm not a fan of) and the orange S3's look good with black wheels. Again - light car / dark wheels.
Thats why I'm not so sure of the rising blue with black wheels because I don't think they'll stand out as much as shiney silver ones would on a rising blue car. Dark car / light wheels! I did see a blue Astra yesterday with graphite coloured wheels that went well.
Just my opinion though...
Carbon Grey looks great on the GTI's. If I'd been buying a GTI, that may well have been my colour of choice - but again, it would have to have silver wheels!
I'm afraid that shadow blue does nothing for me at all.
Tailpipe... when you say the review will be in Car magazine in the middle of Jan - I'm guessing that'll be the February issuse (or maybe even March) since these magazines are normally so far ahead! If they're doing the test next week will the weekly magazines have the review sooner?
VW cars have always had more power than advertised as. The Ed30 was advertised as 230bhp, but the majority of them were 245+bhp out of the factory. I don't know why they do this. Perhaps its to keep the insurance group / cost down.