I was going through the same thing when i got my eclipse about a year ago. I went 17in. rims first and then dropped it about 3 weeks ago. I love it. There is very little gap in the front and almost no gap in the back. It looked about the same with my stock rims on too. I take things a little bit slower in my car but it's really not that bad. I thought i would be scraping on everything but i'm not. If you go with 17in. you will still have a nice size gap. I actually just built a web page about my eclipse and all i have is one old picture of my car when i had no mods yet. The picture does have my 17in. rims on with NO drop. If you are more concerned about that gap than wheels, i would go drop. It's well worth it in my opinion. I hope this helps.

*I'm kinda new to building web pages so i hope that everything shows up.

-MYBISHI
http://www.geocities.com/da_shaw