I've had problems too, at least compared to my old Alpine head unit in my prior car ('93 Subaru Legacy). It does seem to be more sensitive to scratches, and I will eventually replace the stock stereo as soon as some decent dash kits come out. Hopefully there's some way of connecting the steering wheel mounted controls to an aftermarket unit too.
To be honest though, if you pull that stereo out, you've got a lot of space to work with, so it would actually be cool to embed a small LCD monitor in the dash and setup a car audio PC. Sounds like a fun (and complicated) project!
joelmole