JR- you mean the previous owner didnt care about the break in and ran it rough since day one ;)

congrats on the purchase man. the way I see it..:thumbsup:

JR- I realized internet doesnt always translate what i meant so I wanted to make it clear I was so just joking around. Congrats on the car

FFS, clay is not the answer to everything. Certainly not for swirl removal.
It's but a step in an entire process...

Shut up and make the guy feel like he got a good deal! I for one actually think he did!

1st off: good job of negotiating. Curious. Did you look at cars that were on the lot? I know that in Arizona .... there are ALOT of FRS sitting on the lots. Regardless of the pure pricing .... I'll bet there are some deals out there to move the 2013 cars. I was an early adopter meaning I ordered mine and waited 3-4 months to get my car. I paid the typical Scion MSRP fee of 25K. Maybe you bought a car that had been sitting unsold on the lots ... which provided you the good deal.

$3800 is 15% off of $25,000, and the car is not 15% used up, so in that sense it's a good price. 100 people will tell you 100 different things, it all comes down to if you feel that $3800 was worth it.

As for the swirls, you will get scratches in the clear coat just by driving it from the stuff in the air. Always wipe your car in a straight line front to back, never in a circle. You will always get scratches, but straight line scratches are not as bad as swirls.

I didn't look at cars on the lot as much as I informed myself via reaching out and researching hints about their respective dealer inventories and particular 'flexibilities'. The only time I went to the dealer to look at cars on the lot was to look at the Silver Ignition paint color on other models throughout the day so I could make a decision. I actually had the dealer requisition a unit and spec'd it prior to arrival at port. All the deals I was working were for cars coming off the line in Japan. The 10 series only recently started to sit on lots as the last of the units get deployed.

I actually ordered one the very day it was first announced in April and had received updates about my assigned unit prior to receiving an official VIN. If you read the original 10 series thread we were pretty informed w/ our build dates and assigned VINs while they were being made in Gunma. We even were tracking the transport ships across the ocean and had some people scouting the docks to track port deliveries. However, due to various issues my car's delivery was pushed back over and over again. Apparently a combination of a backlog here due to labor and other technical difficulties at the port and Japan stocking inventory while the plant kept rolling out more units they couldn't ship out. This gave me more time to shop around, work various angles and establish rapport w/ various dealers. The main reason was I had a long term relationship w/ a particular dealer that has sold me all my Toyota products. When I found out they wanted to pull the Pure Price BS on me I bailed on them as I saw no reason to maintain my loyalty anymore. Eventually I was able to get the unit spec'd as I wanted at the best price I could find. By end of August, I had to jump on it as interest rates were beginning to climb so waiting any longer would have been too costly in the long run wiping out any deals.

Long story short, I ordered a 10 series in April, purchased a unit in September that was built in May but arrived off the boat in August. Even has '86' as part of the plaque (486/2500), no holes drilled in the bumper and no BS dealer or port installed stuff and pretty flawless all around based on my own PDI. Things just worked out well at the right time after putting in 4 months of effort and patience. My final dealer did try to screw me w/ LoJack at the last minute but he ended up letting it go w/o added costs. So free LoJack for 2 years on top of it. If he didn't cave, I actually would have walked from the deal and waited another couple years at least. He knew it too.

Word of advice to anyone looking to buy a car, don't just look at dealerships for negotiating prices and features. Use the internet and various financial institutions too.

Being an early adopter will never be the best way to get a 'deal'. That's the price of early admission along w/ build issues. Normally I only buy last model year Toyotas as a general rule but the 10 series changed that (this was largely made by Subaru anyway). Neither the FRS or BRZ had the combo of goodies I wanted. So my choices were either wait till 2015 for the refresh/power bump and hope it had everything I want, or take the 10 which was a known quantity and risk some early Subaru quirks (hoping for a touch of Kaizen injection before the 10's start rolling down the line). Suffice to say, I'm very happy w/ my decision so far.