My experience with the dealerships:
The one in Oregon I went to, I'm not going to mention the name, but they were in Beaverton... nice service advisors who have to take the blame for everything, but I was less than thrilled when the rubber meets the road there. They seem to have fairly high turnover, and that's probably how they botched changing the transmission fluid on my Z? No Idea, but it was FINE til they touched it. Overall that dealership simply didn't care. It took them 6 weeks to replace a transmission, and claimed it was "lost" at one point during shipping. I believe they just sent my old transmission somewhere to be "remanufactured" but who knows. Either way I'm glad I wasn't out of pocket $6800 , and now will listen to you guys and get a manual Z next time
Since moving to AZ.. I've been THRILLED with East Valley Nissan. They really go above and beyond, so it's renewed my faith in atleast Nissan dealerships, but I am a realist and understand that Nissan has problems to fix, namely their moronic commitment to the CVT transmissions, and love affair with subprime financing to push the Altima which evidently has a crazy amount of depreciation, so kind of a perverse money maker.
Excited to see what the next Z will look like, but going back to OP: As many say, I believe buying a 3rd year from a new generation is likely the best move.