Well a project car shouldn't really be selected on Insurance. Get yourself something that can be daily driven for awhile. Something cheap, decent fuel economy, etc. Get something that is usually a bullet proof car that can handle a few years while you're building a project car. I'd suggest looking at my project car post I wrote a few nights ago on this forum website. Like I was saying before. A project car shouldn't be chosen on "how much car insurance is". Yes its an understandable stand point, but in my opinion if its your dream to build X model X make X year you shouldn't be too worried on the small amount of money each year compared to the life long accomplishment of completing and driving your dream car. Now here are a few things you really need to consider picking a car. How much do you need to acquire information on. You're in Europe I take it? Well there you're used to seeing cars around your area that originated from your country. For me tearing down a big American V8 is easy, where if I took a car from your country and was told to work on it I'd be very confused. Where you'd have a better idea of what you're doing on it compared to me. So what company do you feel most comfortable with? Is the company you want to go with say Nissan or Mazda is your end result do you need to do research on common problems, mechanical errors that going to happen at x amount of miles, engine research if you need to do engine work, etc. There's many things you're going to need to research weather or not the car is more easy for you to understand. There's a lot to learn when it comes down to a make of a car that isn't familiar to you, but for the cars that are common or familiar to you there's always more things you can educate yourself on no matter what.
You also need to think of how much work is needed. Do you have a big enough space to complete your goal, if not work around that problem. Maybe get a car that doesn't need that much work. Or be prepared to do as much as you can in your shop and save up some more cash to send it to a shop to finish work you cannot complete in the shop you have provided.
Tools, make sure when you go to get your car do a basic search online if there are any specialty tools specific to the model of that car. German cars love to make it complicated with tearing something apart and realizing you need a special wrench that can cost more than the part you're actually putting on. Things like that. Do your research far before pulling the trigger on a car.
Another thing to also do is budget. When I built my project car that was a huge thing. I went online and found all the parts I wanted. Wrote them down on a chart, wrote out price, product description, etc. Then I went back online and found the same part generally a lot cheaper on some of the competitors websites. Its all about planning. You cannot dive into a project with 10,000$ and say I will buy all my parts tonight and it'll be done in the morning. Ya you can send it to a professional shop and have them wack at it and have it done for 10k, but whats the fun in that, and you can save a lot more money on it as well as learn a lot down the road.
If you have any more questions feel free to send me a private message and I'll try to give you further help. Otherwise, good luck with it!