Thank you, that's pretty much what I thought about the insurance. In Britain, you as a specific person have to be insured to drive a specific car (perhaps a side effect of the separate licences for automatic and manual vehicles?), and you can't swap around. From the driver's manual that I was looking through last night, that appears to be the exact situation - you're expected to find a sponsor who is willing to lend you their car for the test, and who has to ride in the back during it for maximum trauma value.

I remember "learning" a lot of things about manual transmission for what I should probably now call my first driving test, that you would never actually do in real life. That is, I'm sure the rules said to downshift while slowing down, but every driving instructor will tell you not to.