I'll give you some advise being young (23 yo) and having a pretty good credit score (mid score - 741).

Here are the things that you can do now:
1. Get 1 or 2 credit cards (you'll take a small hit on your score because of the number of inquiries on your account due to your new loan and the CCs, but it will give you some amount of available credit). Just try not to get any new accounts for at least a year after you opened your last account.
2. Keep your total available credit utilization below 20% (if you only have 1 card, keep it below 20%, if you have 2 or more try to keep the % on each card pretty equal). This is a big part of your score.
3. I know that people say that its better to not pay your bill in full every month, but I think that its just BS that the CC companies want you to do so they can make more money. You can have a really good score paying in full every month
4. Make sure you pay your bills on time every month...its not tough to do, but it can really hurt your score if you don't.
5. Don't open several accounts at once. There are 2 reasons this is bad...1) You will take a hit on number of recent inquiries on your credit and 2) Your average age of your credit will decrease.

Here are the things that you will have to wait on:
1. Part of your score relates to the amount of accounts you have opened and closed in your lifetime. Right now you are young so you just haven't had a lot of chances to get credit and pay it off. One thing you should keep in mind is that a good mix of credit is always a good thing (revolving, charge cards, installment, and mortgage).
2. You need to keep your revolving accounts for a long time (don't close them even if you don't use them often). This will increase the age of your credit history and will help your score.

Very nice credit building tips guys.
I would eventually figure out that using any amount of credit would build it up over time, but having to use at least 20% is something I can't do out of leisure.
I don't like throwing away money just to build credit, but building credit is a game, and if I want to finance, I have to play their game or pay big interest rates.
It's a lose all situation if I don't have good credit, and since I closed one account, it's not helping my score.
I had two credit cards and had taken a 1k loan 6 years ago, but not much since then and now I only have one credit card.

Like Falcor, I don't have any problems paying, even with no credit or bad credit, but it will take a human being, not a credit number crunched by a soulless computer, to determine if someone is capable of paying.
No credit or bad credit does not mean I can't make the payments.

Right now, financing a car is about the most amount of money I'm going to be borrowing. It's not a home loan, and for anyone who has a decent job, they can pull off a car loan easily. If the loan falters, I'm fine with losing the loan and the item being financed.

^ No, you want to keep it below 20%

I agree with you though, it really is all just a big money making game.

If you can pay it off in a year why not just save up for a year and buy it for cash?

That is a cool looking ride. I hope it was treated well by the previous owner with just 2K miles.Looks like at least $1500 in the lip and hood.

probably get better financing and just about the same payments if you bought a new car from the dealer