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Why Americans reject build-to-order cars


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Leasing is just financing - there are dozens of leasing companies. Also many banks and other financial institutions offer leases.

 

With subsidized leases readily available from the OEMs they're not as common as they used to be.

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One of the things which stood out to me during my brief stint in auto sales was how dead-set the guys running the place were against customers ordering cars. If the car wasnt on the lot or another lot nearby, convince them to buy one that was. One manager made a halfway decent case that people back out of orders just often enough to be a huge pain about it, but it still surprised me.

Edited by Moosetang
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We went to a different Ford/Lincoln dealer to get our MKX because they had the colors we wanted to see and we wanted to shop around the trade-in. They were not keen on ordering a vehicle even though I told them we didn't mind waiting. They refused to guarantee the trade-in price (which was a fair but not great price) AND they wanted a 20% deposit which would have been $10K.

 

We found one online that was only missing one feature we wanted and it just so happened they unloaded it off the truck at the same dealer 12 hours after we were there and we took it home later that same day.

 

My regular dealer would have ordered it with $500 deposit no questions asked and I'm sure they would have guaranteed the trade-in price within set parameters on mileage, damage, etc.

 

I guess it just depends on the mindset of the sales managers.

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I should mention that the order deposit is completely bogus and arbitrary, I haven't had to put a deposit on any of my Lincoln orders. But I do believe the deposit does discourage ordering.

You also live in Detroit: Land of the A-Plan. Dealers around here are ridiculously competitive.

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One of the things which stood out to me during my brief stint in auto sales was how dead-set against the guys running the place were against customers ordering cars. If the car wasnt on the lot or another lot nearby, convince them to buy one that was. One manager made a halfway decent case that people back out of orders just often enough to be a huge pain about it, but it still surprised me.

 

I guess I'm special as one of the 5% as I normally do retail orders, and yeah I know a dealer wants to make a sale today vs one in a couple months, but after I spend days/weeks/whatever searching online for specs and know exactly what I want, I don't like somebody else trying to talk me out of it.

 

Back in 2012 when I ordered a Fusion it worked out perfectly: dealer was great and placed order same day, I got my cyberdman updates here so I knew the progress and things worked perfectly - all dealer had to do was input the order, do PDI when it came off the truck, have me come in and sign the papers and off I went as a happy customer and will be back to them.

 

A different dealer on another purchase tried the same crap as noted on the OP's post, tried telling me why I didn't want this or that or should instead get X because it matched what they had in stock, I said no thanks and walked away and won't be back as I'm the customer and don't want to be told what *I* want.

 

But I guess there are plenty of "I want it now" types that will just go with whatever so they can drive the car off the lot right away, to me that's fine for a rental car for a weekend but not for one that I will own for several years.

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The moment that really stood out to me, Jeff, was when I had a customer looking for a particular set of options on a CUV and none of the nearby lots had it. After calling around a second time, I asked the sales manager about walking the customer through an order. He shot down the idea in no uncertain terms and advised me to keep calling around every few days "until someone around here has one close enough that [the customer] will just go for it." I never did make that sale.

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The moment that really stood out to me, Jeff, was when I had a customer looking for a particular set of options on a CUV and none of the nearby lots had it. After calling around a second time, I asked the sales manager about walking the customer through an order. He shot down the idea in no uncertain terms and advised me to keep calling around every few days "until someone around here has one close enough that [the customer] will just go for it." I never did make that sale.

 

More reason direct sale is needed.

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The 2013 Fusion was the last car I dealer ordered. I was one of the early adopters and we were given the Mexico transported from lot to lot story. My car didn't leave the factory until until 90 days after it was built. At one time there were over 30k completed Fusions just sitting in the desert sun. That soured me on dealer ordering. Since that 2013 experience I have bought 4 Ford/Lincolns. All were dealer trades and all were just how I wanted them.

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Speaking of Dealerships....where has Dean been? Haven't seen him post in weeks...

 

Maybe he is too busy trying to help a customer hunt down a Transit in inventory that matches what the customer wants because we all know customers don't custom ordering vehicles...

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