Unpopular Post (no doubt but...)

Originally Posted by Mergnthwirker

If these issues were rampant, you might be right to worry. Frankly, however, you are making a mountain out of a molehill. These are great cars, and most people have few, if any problems.

My own experience: I've never had any of the problems you list.
* No hatch issues
* oil temps were higher before break-in, took it autocrossing and never broke 260; did have a bit of fuel starvation in right-hand turns until I filled the tank. Never had any oil temp issues all summer on hottest days, stop & go driving, nada
* no paint defects
* no ECU noise. Not even very noisy on trips, except on badly surfaced roads. But it is remarkably civilized for a sports car (vs. GT, like the Infiniti G37)
* no shifting problems. I originally disabled the rev-matching feature, but came to love it at the autocross when I was focused on my line & braking points, having the perfect rev-match really helped my times.
* no other problems

But it is not very exciting to post, "well, no problems again today!" Not surprising that you see only problems on the boards. But if you look at some of the third party services that track repair frequency & costs, you'll see that our cars rank among the very best. I think you are getting the wrong impression by reading the boards. Not a bad thing to do, when checking out a potential major purchase. But you need to think about frequency & magnitude of issues as well.

And if you look at the magnitude of the problems, where's the beef? I remember the first year of the Porsche Boxster, where the CEL light was referred to as the "Change Engine Light" Here, we are obsessing about barely visible paint chips at the edges of the bumper... High oil temps that almost no one observes after break-in, especially in everyday driving (unless you track your car). Huge difference in size/pain of issues! This is all minor crap, except for the terminally obsessed.

These cars perform exceptionally well, especially at this price point. They seem to be screwed together well. They maximize driver involvement and rewards. And they seem to be durable and reliable. What else is this quality that you are looking to buy?