The purchase

I began actively searching for a BRZ sometime early to mid-November. While chatting with my car buddies on our discord chat room I remembered that my friend Clyde had sent me an autotrader link to a Lightning Red BRZ a few weeks back that was fairly local to us here in N.J. At the time when he sent me the link I wasn't really interested because I was set in finding an Argento FR-S. However, after a few days of extensive car searching I came to realize that the Lightning Red he had sent me was a good deal, and 30 min drive from my house. By this time I now knew that I also wanted a BRZ vs an FR-S because my eyes prefer the BRZ front-end and I also knew that I wanted a Limited trim because comfort & convenience for daily driving duties.

 Limited adds:

• Alcantara seat inserts with leather bolsters All-Weather Package (dual-mode heated front seats, heated exterior mirrors). The heated options are useful up here in the Northeast U.S.A
• Auto-dimming rear view mirror with homelink.
• Dual-zone automatic climate control system.
• Key less access and start(used to it with S2000 and wife's SUV.)

The Limited trim offers other minor differences but the above are the ones I cared about. I would have preferred no rear spoiler but it is what it is. 

A quick search in our chat room to find this link again and I was happy to see it was still available for sale and price had been reduced $1k since I first saw the ad.

Drove to BMW of Bloomfield one Saturday afternoon where I met with sales rep Jerry Martinez, nice gentlemen, never felt pressured by him to strike a deal. I'm not a fan of buying from dealerships but Jerry and the team made it pleasant. I test drove the car which had just around 13,323 miles on it. Did my own personal inspection , carfax checked out, visual inspection for all VIN tags were good, paint matched on all body panels, everything worked, no visible leaks anywhere, no weird noises(other than the infamous fuel pump chirping) and the test drive showed no signs of transmission, engine or other problems.
Looked good, felt good.

I left the dealership not striking a deal but felt good about that particular car. I wanted to go home and sleep on it. I decided to do a bit more homework on pricing and one final car search for local inventory within 100 or so miles to make sure nothing new that caught my eye had just been listed.

Fast forward a few days past Thanksgiving and my car search yielded this particular vehicle as being my best option at that time which met my criteria (fairly local, under $19k, mfg warranty still left, limited trim, under 15k miles on odometer). Called up Jerry and made an appt. to go see the car one more time, one more test drive, one more once over and then we sat and struck a deal.

Funny thing....on this day Jerry says "My manager says he knows you and your S2000"....err.....what?

Turns out one of the managers at BMW of Bloomfield is a local racer friend. Small world, I felt even more comfortable buying now.

Deal made and a couple of hours later I was driving her home. Woohoo

I spent a couple of hours when I got it home clearing out the garage to make room for Knuckles to sleep tucked away next to the S2000. Interestingly enough the red paint on both the BRZ and the S2000 are so close to each other. Heck, even my snow thrower's red paint matches!