Oct, I gave Saur about 760K isk and a Bantam, Condor and Kestral w/ 4 missle launchers and afterburner.  
I found for courier missions (no fighting) get a cheap shuttle.  550m/s sure does cut down on the 15km flight to the next gate.
If we had an AH corp and started to take over some stations or control whole constellations, I would pay the price.  For me though, the solo game was boring as hell.  The AI pirates are dumber than a first day AH newbie.
...also, I hate that there is no direct control over the ships.  It's an online economy simulator in space.  I guess I wanted more of a sim.