It's my first new car but I was prepared slightly for the smell by tales from my friend with his IS300.

It stinks! The first 200km the car really smells of burning rubber and plastic as everything beds in. This wafts into the cabin when you stop in traffic and is very obvious when you park or stop for fuel. Has worn off now after 500km luckily.

Inside the smell is more neutral than I expected. There isn't as much leather smell as I thought there'd be on opening the doors. You really have to put your nose to the seats to smell it.

The black parts of the seats on the edges and the centre front are a kind of ribbed rubbery/plastic feel. The red parts are nice soft leather.

I think the smell is exacerbated by the heat the car generates. After my trip, under the wheel arches was very hot. Also the boot floor gets very hot - the centre of the heat seems to be the exhaust behind the back plate. I didn't check in the engine but didn't feel anything from there and all the gauges were fine.

Like most people said the oil pressure gauge is a bit gimmicky I think. Also there is a massive space between it and the trip counter which could have done with another dial, like voltage or something.

What about the color? How does it look in the sun? My Miata stunk like crazy when I got it also. It will go away soon. Is there any heat coming from the center area (Storage, cup holders.etc).

My Miata generates some pretty good heat down the center

Colour is awesome! You can see blue in it in the sunlight. Looks grey by itself but next to other grey/silver cars you can see it's a more complex colour. Photos can't really reflect it as so much depends on the lighting and your viewing angle. The colour doesn't change as much as the latest Alfa's tend to though - they're like cameleons. I'll post a side-by-side comparison to a grey Spirit R if that helps.

No noticable heat inside.

BTW: it has climate control to solve that debate!

besides time, venilation setting, radio station, outside temp, and 'RX-8' what can the display show? Any computerized trip info - avg speed, mpg, distance to destination, etc?

You've summarised most of it. There is no trip computer. The navi shows distance to destination. The display also shows the CD number, track and time for CD's. Plus it has a display of coloured blocks 1-6 to show which CD the 6 changer is operating on during load and eject operations.