Based on the responses already in this thread, it sounds like you're abandoning AUTOLOAD for this project. Thats probably a good idea. Heavy use of AUTOLOAD leads to some serious ugliness, particularly when inheritance / polymorphism is involved.

2 threads i started a while ago have helped me a lot, and may be able to offer you some insight into autoload problems. So if you get a chance, check out these:

AUTOLOAD - the good, the bad, and the ugly
AUTOLOAD cascade