> the Phase5 employees [...] did build a pretty impressive addition to the code base

Addition to the actual 3.1 code base or addition to a reimplementation of the 3.1 code base? ;-)

> at one point I was offer V4 cpus for $17 in quantities of 300 minimum.

Yes, that's normal V4 pricing. However, V4 lacks both FPU and MMU, so not really suited. Even the V4m, which is between V4 and V4e in price, lacks FPU. When I find going ColdFire V4e idiotic, it's only plausible that I'd find going V4 or V4m completely bonkers.

> The only thing that beats that is some ARM cpus.

Even e5500's price per performance/features is lower than ColdFire V4's. Comparing prices without taking performances and features into account doesn't make sense.