ViperPilot

The point is, it wouldn't cost Ford anything. All it would take is a PDI center at AAI or wherever your car is made. After finishing off the paperwork at their dealership, the customer can fly (on their own dime, usually costs less than $150 one way from anywhere in the US) to Detroit, Ford could shuttle you to the PDI center, take delivery, you get temp tags and off you go. Charge the PDI cost, they have to pay it anyways. Customer gets to save about $400, dealer still makes the sale, and the customer gets a memorable "adventure" to associate with the car. And THAT's what made my friend's Volvo purchase stick out on his mind, and why he would have bought another before Ford sold Volvo to Geely. Was the thrill of being one of the first to drive his car down the Autobahn. Instead of waiting for a phonecall that might come someday.

That's funny, I have the same access to info as the dealers do. Why can I tell customers where their cars are and they can't. And I'm not even getting a sale commision.

Excuses excuses excuses. Ford (remember? They owned Volvo) flew my friend/coworker to SWEDEN FFS, put him up and let him take his $45,000 vehicle out for an Autobahn joyride. People here spend $55G on a Shelby and can't get a fucking straight answer where their car is, let alone see where their car is built. Many (not all) Mustang buyers would pay their own way to Dearborn to pick up their car and joyride it home if it saved them $850 in delivery cost. With all the boohooing of what you CAN'T do, is there anything that you CAN? Doesn't seem like it from any of your posts.

Even a factory tour/visit option whenyou pick it up would be cool. A coworker of mine got a trip to Europe to pick up his Volvo at the plant, got to drive it for a few days and then brought it back to the plant where they shipped it off to his Volvo dealership in Canada. You can't even get a plant tour here.

To start, 1) Ford owns the Ford name. They set the level of customer satisfaction, and franchisees that can't maintain a positive customer satisfaction rating and their franchise is PULLED. Not allocation reduced. PULLED. Reduced allocation still allows a sh!tty dealer to screw around customers. "Well sir, we ordered your Mustang, no news yet but someday you'll get it. In the meantime we'll hold your deposit" or even better yet, when the dealer sells an ordered car out from under another buyer. I've seen it happen. 2) Ford dealers need to step up and get with this century. If I had a dime for every time that I had a customer said "please track my car for me my dealer doesn't know how/can't be bothered to look it up in Vehicle Visibility" I could retire. Or if Ford wants to put the information out there, the dealers can be for it not against it. You know, people go on and on about how the UAW is outdated and the dinosaurs need to be brought out of the dark ages, There are dealers that need to do the same. Yes, there are good dealers and bad dealers out there (as well as good and bad customers). But when people feel the need to post on a forum, ie. "Dealer recommendations for Toronto?" it's not a good thing. It means that there are enough crappy dealers that they're worried about getting one. You should be able to walk into any dealer in the Ford chain and be comfortable that you're not going to be screwed over.

I don't think that GM should be the company we want to emulate. But I do see similarities. Companies handcuffed by outdated franchise laws would be one.

Well, you can at least look at the bright side. Toyota has found a way to make their vehicles stop. Cures the sudden acceleration problem.

Franchise laws have existed for a long time and it's hard to enact change. Unfortunately, it's not that Ford doesn't want more control over the customer experience, it's that Ford can't. Look at A/X plan. Ford program, dealer can choose whether to allow it or not. Why? Because the "profit" on an A/X plan is fixed. You're dictating what profit a dealer can make. This is America -- you can't tell someone what profit can make. Ford tried to improve things with the "Blue Oval Certified" program, dealers sued. Not saying it can't be done, but it's definitely an uphill climb.

Before you take it in there's 3-4 different fuses for the Shaker 500 that supply constant power (ie one of which will be used to keep the memory alive.) Look in the manual and make sure that all your fuses are good before you pay someone to fix something that ain't broke. Did you check all your powepoints?

There's been 7 updates and 2 shuntings since Blasn. There is no full train that runs directly from Detroit to Connecticut. It is one car of a whole train, it gets to an intermediate point, railcars are shuffled, etc. gets connected to another train, and moves on. Sure, you could drive directly from Connecticut to Buffalo in 6 hours; but to hire a tractor trailer to transport ONLY your car would cost you $2000. You're paying $850. Forget the wait before it shipped , that's history now. Your car left Flat Rock 5 days ago. I've had regular mail take a week to get to NYC. Freaking out about it isn't going to make it arrive any sooner.

... 218 miles ...

500 miles

Just understand that not everyone here (by a large amount) works for Ford.

Well, in all fairness, there's enough blame to go around on this one... We all know (all of us at the dealers and that work in the plants) that when new models start (and the drivetrain changes to the '11s are substantial enough to qualify) the status quo for Ford is to hold all of these vehicles for an unusually long period as they get any bugs worked out. And when everything is proved out they ALL get released. Herein the problem lies, when a (normally) good customer gets his order in very early (pre-order in JANUARY!!!) and the car is built and held for some unknown reason without ANY word from Ford or the dealer as to WHY. On top of that, he belongs to a Mustang enthusiast forum where people were ordering Mustangs, getting them built and delivered long AFTER he put in his order. A little communication goes a long way. While we can point and laugh all we want at the irony (to be completely honest, even I was annoyed at the "well if you I don't get my car I'll get a Camaro" (because he could have possibly found a dealer order GT within driving range)), the OP's impatience is partly understandable; he's waited over 6 months for a car, was first in line for one, and he's stuck waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Anyone who belongs to an enthusiast forum other than this one (and I do -- Focus, Ranger, Taurus and Mustang, my next purchase) will tell you that the lack of info is worse than even a little info -- it breeds speculation. "Is there a problem with my car?" "Oh no, it's a lemon!!...." What it does is works the potential customer up and makes them second-guess their purchase decision. If anyone remembers my history here, I used to do tracking here at BON. The reason I got out of it was because of this very problem with communication. One new model year, they built and held all the new Escape and Mariner Hybrids. Typical new model hold. Well, the "hybrid" forum community got all worked up waiting for their ordered vehicles; and rightly so. But add into the mix the 10% of the population that I label as the "extremists" that started threatening lawsuits, cooking up conspiracy theories and such. For all the reassurance that I tried to give (and hey -- I've got no control over the situation), I wasn't able to give what one official letter from Ford Corporate could have given -- some reassurance. I got frustrated at the process I couldn't fix and at the same time wasn't going to be drawn into activity that would put my employer into a lawsuit. So I had to end the tracking service. What we really need to see here is a better line of communication between the manufacturing arm and the dealer, and from the dealer to the customer. The customer shouldn't have to chase around the dealer for info, and the dealer should have more info if there is a delay in a customer's order. There should be no reason that when a customer/dealer submits an order that they can't get some PIN number where a customer can log on to a special customer website with that PIN and pull up Vehicle Visibility for their order. THAT is what people expect in the 21st century.

That's unfortunate. Your car shipped today. In Transit Shipped Convoy - Convoy # 76265 (Cassens Transport Co ) Ramp 5P, Flat Rock, MI Jun-27-2010, 05:48 ET You should swing by the dealership this week and see what you could have been driving for your birthday.

"Sent Offsite" means that your vehicle is being sent through the Vehicle Personalization Center (VPC) to finish off your vehicle (tape stripe, etc). I have no indication of what the delay was between April and now though. Sorry.

A ten day lag between when you finalized with your dealer and placing the order is a little long but we don't know if there is any backstory here. Was the sale "conditional on financing? Then they would have to run a credit check before placing the order. Deposit by cheque? Wait until it clears. Not sticking up for the dealer necessarily but it is possible that the dealer wanted all the "i's dotted and t's crossed" before submitting the order -- he may be using his only allocation or may be getting it from somewhere else. Did you change your mind on the tape stripe? There are 2 window stickers, for some reason they're different and the difference is the mention of a satin black tape stripe. Some of the options you ordered meant the car had to be shipped through the Vehicle Personalization Center (VPC). This means that after production (May-04-2010) the car has to be shipped (May-04-2010) to VPC but it was backed up, so it needed to be stored until its turn in the queue. It didn't get into VPC until May-15-2010, and was then returned to AAI on May-21-2010 where it is waiting to ship. Also take into account that the week after this was the Memorial Day weekend where they might not ship. This may not apply to you, but I am under the impression that there was a delay in some manual transmission cars being released for a minor quality issue at the plant.

Not that I advocate street racing, BUT: If you were in sixth and the transmission shifted on its own to say 3rd or 4th coasting up to a red light that just turns green you would sure look like a tool if it should shift back to 6th when you want to "drop the hammer".

Please take a second to peruse the topic. The topic at hand (as mentioned a number of times in the thread) is Ford talks with the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), and yes, the money given to Chrysler and GM by the Canadian government was conditional on employment footprint. 20% as stated by SUV Guy. When St Thomas closes in 2011 Ford will have less than 9% in Canada. Hell, to make 20% Ford would have to keep St Thomas and INCREASE product here by about 7%.

GM and Chrysler concessions were made as a condition of receiving government money, to which the government also received guarantees of maintaining certain levels of employment. Seems Ford wants the best of all three worlds -- the benefit public approval by saying "we don't need government money", concessions from workers and no guarantees of employment levels. We aren't comparing apples to apples then, are we?

Labour costs are higher in Canada because 1) Oakville Assembly is operating at less than 75% capacity and 2) St Thomas is working on 1 shift. Labour costs are the same whether the plant works at 50% or 100% but the COST PER VEHICLE changes.

Ford could go belly-up next month, leaving you with no pension at all let alone P-cola. That's life. If you're going into retirement depending on an indexed pension that may or may not be there you are indeed foolish.

How would you know? You don't even work on the line anymore.

Assuming you're a non-employee, this is how it works. Every year at every plant there are shutdown weeks that the company (usually) uses to do yearly maintenance, model changes, tooling upgrades, etc. A production employee has to allot vacation time to cover that shutdown time. Most don't complain because it is usally during the summer. But it is their vacation, planned well in advance. (Usually by IIRC the end of March). And depending on the worker's seniority it may be the only two weeks of the summer that they get to spend with their family. So you can't just up and cancel everyone's vacation, you can only ask for volunteers. And hope you get enough takers to run a shift.