The Carenado 172 will take some beating and is well worth the price, the only niggle I have with it is the night lighting, other than that I love it and its set as my default ride.
You can add VC lighting to any aircraft simply by adding a VC light in the [LIGHTS] section of your aircraf.cfg file. See simple sample below.
[Views]
eyepoint=-1.7, -0.884, 1.60
[LIGHTS]
//Types: 1=beacon, 2=strobe, 3=navigation, 4=cockpit, 5=landing
light.0 = 3, -3.02, -17.82, 0.62, fx_navredcarenarrow
light.1 = 3, -3.00, 17.82, 0.62, fx_navgrecarenarrow
light.2 = 10, -1.80, 0, 2.10, fx_vclightarrow
light.3 = 10, -2.25, 0, 1.90, fx_vclightarrow2
light.4 = 2, -3.27, -17.85, 0.62, fx_strobecarenarrow
light.5 = 2, -3.25, 17.85, 0.62, fx_strobecarenarrow
light.6 = 4, -1.7, 0.0 , 1.60 , fx_vclightwhite
This is for Carenado Arrow PA28. I added "light.6" the first number "4" is for cockpit lights and the next three numbers are from your eyepoint. Change the middle number in eyepoint to 0.0 so it will be in the middle of the VC. and the "fs_vclightwhite" is a FSX default vc light. You should be able to do this to any VC in either FS9 or FSX. I've been doing it for years on aircraft that don't have vc lights or are like carenado's in that they don't seem to work the way I would like them to.
David