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Rob_K

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  1. Does your order shop "VPC Shipthru" as a line item? If so it will go through the VPC or Vehicle Personalization Center" for the install prior to shipment. It's basically across the street from the Flat Rock assembly plant.
  2. Well put and understood. Thanks for your assistance VP! Enjoy this insanely cold holiday!
  3. As stated, you're already a loyal buyer so why in the world would they want to offer incentives? Now the dealer on the other hand should take care of you in some way or another, but again, you're buying anyway so what's the point? By the way, I'm simply looking at this from a dollars and cents position. The whole purpose of incentives of any sort - x-plan, rebates, discounted financing is to lure buyers.
  4. You're not kidding! I couldn't believe the "Shelby" adder on the sticker. Over $2k for the GT Upfitter package then Shelby's $8k. It amounts to a sticker package with a few FRPP add-ons that could be had for about $2k over the counter. Shelby is getting WAY too much for what they do. The add-on grill is decent, but they're install over the stock grill is just cheap. Add to that their install is a hack job. Have you looked at the holes for the hood pins? It looks like they used a dull uni-bit with burrs all over the place. At least it won't rust. I really like the look and idea of the car, but I intend to do exactly what you describe, I'm buying a pedestrian GT and putting an intercooled Whipple (500HP!) on it baby! I'll still have about $12k in pocket vs. the Shelby. Since I drive my cars instead of sticking them in a vault, I'm not horribly concerned about resale down the road. I'll have my fun then move on to something else like I always do.
  5. Sure Caroll says it the real deal. He's collecting those royalty checks every month! In actuallity he had very little, if anything to do with the development of the car. It was the brainchild of the folks in marketing (SVT). Back in the 60s Ford approached Caroll and had him do the development of the cars and I believe he actually built them. The GT500s roll off the line at Flat Rock with the rest of the stangs. The Shelby GT is shipped as a finished GT with a few oddities such as the California Special bumpers and side scoops, the Black Bullitt wheels, V6 fenders (no holes), spoiler delete trunk lids and a few other items already on the car. Shelby then adds their scoop and overlay grille and bolts on a bunch of Ford Racing bolt-ons. It's not a spectacular car performance-wise, but it is touched by Shelby employees. I think it might be the closet collectible of the two "Shelbys", but again I'm not spending my money to find out. To each his own though man! Buy what you love and drive it!
  6. Agreed, the M3 is far more common, but I actually disagree about the future value of the GT500s and Shelby GTs for that matter. The GT500 is a pretty decent car, but it's super porky, ill handling and isn't really a Shelby. Ford simply licensed his name. The Shelby GT is an actual Shelby since the cars are sold to Shelby and they actually run it through their plant, even though all they're doing is bolting on FRPP components. At any rate, Ford is attempting to create a legend which won't work. What happened with the Shelby's of the 60s will never happen again. The guys buying the GT500s are the very same guys who missed the boat in the 60s. Surely no 20 year old can afford one. Once all of these old guys are gone there won't be any demand! I predict you'll be able to pick up a GT500 for $25k in about 2 years. And since when is there only an allocation of one per store? I thought the only limitation was plant capacity. I didnt' think there was a set run number (GT500s anyway)? With the crazy ADMs on these things (local dealer was a $20K ADM on a Shebly GT - about what GT500s sell for on ebay) it will take a LOOOOONG time to recoup that value - if ever. What kind of mark-ups were there on the Shelbys in 1968? I'm not looking for a fight here. I'm simply saying that dealers taking huge mark-ups to test the limits of the market and selling cars out from under folks is not a good thing for anyone. Agreement, contract, handshake or not. All it does is drive the business elsewhere. I bought a new '97 Cobra back in the day. Most of the dealers in my area were marking them up $3k-$5k. I kept looking until I found a dealer that would go for MSRP. When I did, I went down that night and picked it up. He still made a few bucks AND got 4 more sales from me when I told all my friends about my experience. All told I think he ended up selling about 7 or 8 units and got a bunch of service work. Which is better - 5 happy, long term customers or one big ADM and a bunch of disappointed/pissed off never-to-be customers? If you can get the big mark-ups then good for you. I know P.T. Barnum was on the money when he said " A sucker is born every minute". (Yeah, I know P.T. Barnum is reported to have never said that, but it's such a long-standing urban legend I didn't know whom else to attribute it to.)
  7. Uh, I put a deposit on an E46 M3 about a year before it was due out. I got the dealer's first car at sticker. No problems. No worries. They're an UPSTANDING retailer with an excellent reputation. They're not out to line their pockets by screwing unsuspecting suckers, I mean customers.
  8. Actually, when any dealer takes a customer's deposit on a factory order there's never a VIN. There's no car. So, technically, your argument isn't holding up. I know folks that have done this exact thing with other cars (BMW to be exact) and the dealers kept up their end of the bargain. I realize you aren't standing up for this low life dealer that sat on this poor guy's deposit for two years, but don't call him an idiot for expecting the dealer to live up to their promise. It actually does happen sometimes.
  9. Now that's a bit more information that might have helped early on in the thread here. At any rate, I would agree that it's poor practice to renig on a contract just because you think you can do better. Imagine trying to buy a house and having the seller first agree to your price, then pulling it because someone offered more. That wouldn't be much fun now would it?
  10. They did finally take care of me when I reordered, but I insisted that the salesman go pick up some lunch while I had some "quality time" with the sales manager. I hovered over his shoulder while he entered the order. There was no way I would let him screw up the order a second time around. I also made it a point to let him know that his customer service skills were absolutely awful. While I never purchased from this particular store, I had family and friends who had. All had some sort of tale to tell and it all led back to this one guy. They all cringed when I told them I ordered my car there. I did it out of convenience since pricing wasn't an issue. I can't believe the GM or owner hadn't done anything about him over all the years he's been there. He must be the owner's son in law or something. The worst thing he had pulled was repairing a significantly damaged Mustang and selling it as new. He sold it to one of my technicians. I actually discovered a run in the paint on one of the fenders, then realized the VIN sticker was missing and the fender liner was new. The hood was also missing the VIN sticker. Upon closer scrutiny I could see the fender, hood and passenger side back to a blend in the rear quarter had been painted. I told my tech to go back and ask what the heck these guys were trying to pull. The GM immediately intercepted the conversation, admitted they sold the car by accident, then immediately offered another car and $5,000 cash to keep things quiet. And yes, this same sales manager was the guy who said, sure it's for sale.
  11. Dean, I agree with you 100%. There are WAY too many options/codes to remember for the whole line. I think I recall that there are litterally thousands of combinations you can spec out for the F-series alone! My beef is with the sales manager treating his sales guys like lakeys and customers like morons. As I mentioned above, I had already listed out the options I wanted by order code. He literally had to enter the codes and type in my name - done. Instead he insisted on arguing that I didn't know what I was talking about regarding the options I had selected. You're absolutely right that an educated customer who has spent a bunch of time researching a particular model will definitely be better versed than the salesman that needs to know the whole line up, and quite honestly likely sells 9 cars off the lot for every 10 sold. Egos need to be set aside and ears need to open to realize "hey this guy has done his homework" and simply make sure that he's on the right track. Taking an "here comes another idiot who did research on the internet" attitude does nothing but drive customers away. I can't bash sales guys as that's MY profession!
  12. I actually was very pleased with the salesman. He immediately recognized I was not the average customer and adapted to that fact very quickly. It was the sales manager that was such a challenge. The salesman himself was getting very upset because of the BS that was being delivered. It literally was as if he didn't have time to "deal" with me. It honestly should have been at most a 30 minute transaction. Instead it ended up being 4 hours of torture. When they got the first order wrong, I initially was going to pull my deposit and go to another dealer, but I stuck with them for the salesman's sake because he really was making an effort to make things right. As stated above, having the best portfolio of products on the planet will do little good if the dealers are chasing customers away.
  13. +1 My first car ordered would have been delivered by now. But, since the dealer botched the order the replacement won't be here until some time in May. Wondering how much this is going to cost me...
  14. I think one of the fundamental action items that need to be addressed in an effort to regain market share is a revamping of the dealer network. I've had numerous Ford products in the past and each time I purchased I ended up visiting multiple dealers before I found one I could tolerate. Yes, I did say tolerate. For my latest purchase, I decided on an '07 Mustang GT. Thanks to a well connected friend in Dearborn I had my x-plan PIN in my pocket and a copy of the '07 order guide so I knew all the codes and knew what had been added with Job 2. So, I went to my local dealer to see if a car they had in stock would suit my needs. It was close, but not quite there. They offered to order one, so that's what we did. This is where it got ridiculous. For starters, the salesmanager thinks he's the smartest man alive. Even though I walked in with an order guide under my arm and a list of all the order codes I was looking to get, it took four hours to complete the transaction. At first I wasn't able to deal directly with the sales manager (only one that new how to use Concepts). The poor salesman had to be a go between. I had a few new options from Job 2 as well as some VPC center installed accessories. The sales manager flagged some of these options and said I couldn't get them on a Mustang. I knew otherwise and was insistent. It finally got to the point I walked over the guy's desk and demanded he enter the darn codes as I had typed them up. To his amazement it took all of them. Throughout this whole process he was a total jerk and basically treated me like an idiot. They literally couldn't have had an easier sale. Now, here's where things got worse. He gave me a copy of a VOC to sign off on once he entered everything I wanted correctly (3rd try by the way). It wasn't until weeks later I realized the VOC they had given me was bogus, created just to get the pricing nailed down. So, when I stopped in to check on the status I learned the car had been serialized. I also found he had mis-entered one of the options. He insisted it could be fixed and days later confirmed it had been fixed. All the while I had my friend in Dearborn checking it in DORA and the error was still present. After a week and a half they finally admitted their mistake and offered to re-order. This time I stood over the salesmanagers shoulder and INSISTED that he enter the actual order on the spot, not a bogus one as he had before. The next day I realized he included California emissions (I'm in PA - an EPA border state). I requested that he remove it and he insisted it was required. After some research and again referencing the order guide I determined it is optional in border states. I finally was able to convince him to remove it when I pointed out that NONE of the cars in his inventory had it. So, long story short, after two attempts I'm finally getting my new Mustang. Now, if mine was an isolated incident I would simply right it off as a random issue. But I spend a lot of time on internet forums and it seems this is happening a lot. There were some many things that I knew about that the dealer had no clue about. As I mentioned at the beginning, I knew exactly what I wanted and did all the homework/leg work for them. If I had so many issues with my best case scenario, what must be happening to all the less informed folks?
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