Thanks! I haven't heard of Alubeam Silver before; had to google it. Looks interesting, but i bet it looks even better in person.

It's here! Unfortunately, I only got to drive it for 30 min before I dropped it off for Xpel & Opticoat. First time I've ever spent any money on that type of stuff.... of course, it's also the first time I've bought a car more than $60K as well...

Congrats man. You sound like me and appreciate getting exactly what you want. Although the wait can be agonizing it's worth getting exactly what you desire without having to settle. Enjoy it. Love those brakes!!!

Congratulations! Beautiful color choice. FWIW, my S212 was also the first car that I clear wrapped.

Um, wow! What a great experience, the cars under the covers is awesome. I really like seeing the guy in the parking lot taking a picture of your car, it is awesome. I've been to the Mercedes Museum, but never to the AMG factory. Hope to go back and drive the Nurburgring this year, a trip to see where the mighty M157 is made is a must. Gotta track down the guy who made my engine and take him a cigar.

Thanks for sharing, stunning car.

Beautiful color!

Hey CJ, Which dealership(s) did you try? I'm in San Jose and considering moving from an M4 to a C63 ... I love BMW ED as it's a well tailored experience and everytime we've done it's been great.

My M4 was one of the first 44 allocations in the US so I actually had to buy through a dealer in LA to get any type of decent deal - SF dealers were charging MSRP+$25k!

Anyway, I'm curious about your dealership experience and, if you've done BMW ED how the Benz experience compares. THANKS!!

Sorry for the delay, hopefully this response is not too late.

I called around to most dealerships in the Bay Area and went into deeper negotiations with MB of Marin (offered only 2.5% off of non-ED, and nothing off of ED) and MB of San Francisco. I got a particularly good deal due to a multi-month sale process that involved an external car broker (Cartelligent), several sales managers, a transferred allocation from a Texas dealership and a few broken promises. I can't exactly lay the blame of the poor process on the car broker vs. the dealership, but suffice to say that it's not a process you want to go through. MB of SF made it clear that they would not have given me the deal I got if the allocation hadn't come through Cartelligent even though they were annoyed that I had actually come to them first, they told me "no", and then they ended up selling me the car at an even lower profit margin due to the lower sales price AND the commission they had to pay Cartelligent. But, don't take this as a recommendation to call up Cartelligent - it may work for you... may not. They stepped out of the process once this turned into an ED.

If you're happy getting your car at the standard ED discount, I can recommend the ED salesman Bill Scott at MB of San Francisco in terms of service. I don't think he has a lot of room to negotiate, but his service through the process was quite good.

HOWEVER, my #1 recommendation would be to call the MB ED expert, Herbert Haemmer at http://www.mbeuropeandelivery.com. I spoke with him many times and the only reason I didn't buy from him was because he couldn't get an allocation. He is extremely knowledgeable and is a no negotiation-fixed price (don't even try!) ED salesman who will likely give a roughly 2-3% discount OFF OF THE DISCOUNTED PRICE. He will also have the car delivered to SF so you don't have to worry about picking up the car in San Diego (though you can if you want a fun drive up PCH!)