I know it's an old thread, but I thought I'd put in my $.02 anyway.
I had to deal with this exact problem. I bought a Metro 6/1 and tore it down, then moved to another state and went back to school, so had no time to finish the build and get a generator running. Then I went and bought a house up on top of a hill with terrible power utility reliability.
I needed a generator, I needed it to be reliable, electric start (so the wife could start it), and I needed it quickly. I also needed to spend as little as practical on it. The doctors on either side of us put in turnkey auto-start 10+ KW LPG units. None of my cars cost that much, so I certainly couldn't afford that solution. I also didn't want more than about 7 KW capacity because I wanted good efficiency and no wet stacking.
My friend with an addiction to large green trucks formerly owned by the US Military hooked me up with an ex-US Army MEP-002A for a very reasonable price. It's a 2 cylinder four-stroke air cooled Onan design rated at a nominal 5KW, which sounded a little marginal, until I found out that the 5KW rating was at 10,000 ft MSL, 100% duty cycle, and 80% power factor. The civilian generator with the same power head was rated at 8KW. It's not auto-start, but it is electric start and comes with handy operating instructions on a metal plate atop the control cubicle. Also has a neat output switch capability that gives you the choice of 120V/1ph, 240V/1ph or 208V/3ph. Lots of people use these (and their larger 10KW sibling) to run 3 phase equipment in shops instead of paying the power utility to run a 3 phase feed.
It's rather loud, but it's also completely indestructable - The design has exactly two faults: 1: there is no overcurrent protection on the field circuit, so you can cook the voltage regulator if you idle it instead of just let it spin up to near 60 Hz as it is supposed to, and 2: the injection pump is a little fragile if the engine is allowed to sit and grow gunk in it. That's it. Fuel economy is pretty good: about 0.5 USG/hr at rated power.
That's what sits beside the shed waiting for the next ice storm. When i get the listeroid put together it'll be a cogen system, and will be expected to provide supplemental heat and power from waste oil. There's no easy way to do this with the military generator as it is air cooled and is (a little) pickier about its fuel.
The listeroid is a toy with practical applications that forms part of my long-term energy management strategy. The military generator is reliable standby power here now. I don't plan on getting rid of either one.