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> In future American OEMs may move to a more European model where vehicles are built to specific customer order. That's it, I'm moving to Europe.

CamperBob2 4y ago
You don't have to do that. Many if not most automakers, both foreign and domestic, already accept custom orders through their dealers. You're not going to like the wait time, though.
- agensaequivocum 4y ago
  I placed an order for a Sienna a couple of months ago. However, it's more of getting put in line for something similar that is allocated to the dealer. The more specific, the longer the wait is.
  - bfdm 4y ago
    But this doesn't make any sense, that's exactly the problem. If you wanted a particular configuration they should direct the plant to assemble that configuration just as soon as they've finished assembling any special configuration requests placed before yours.
    - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
      Possibly they do configurations in phases, so the more unusual your request, the longer it will be before they're building a suitable batch. Maybe they only do adaptive cruise models on Wednesday and wood trim on the third week of the month. Now to get both you have to wait a month and because the ship leaves in 2 weeks, now you have to wait for the next one. Semiconductors are the same. Manufacturer lead times are, even in good times, long for many things because they don't hold stock to cover big orders. If you come along and order a million AD4242WTFBBQ-OMGXXX, one of dozens of variants of a chip, they don't have that boxed and ready. You'll have to wait until the fab is doing that variant again. The problem now is that all the distributor stock that used to keep everyone going while the big orders were scheduled is gone, and the fabs are so slammed that the time to the next free slot is measured in years, not weeks. And that's if the fab is still making that jellybean part at all and hasn't switched to a higher-margin part.
      - pnutjam 4y ago
        I've been looking for a van and I was told that Chevy full size vans are done in the same plant as an SUV. They do a 2 month cycle of vans, then a 4 month cycle of SUV. So if you order at the wrong time, it could be over 4 months to wait.
  - yumraj 4y ago
    how about the price? did you get a good price or you had to still pay over MSRP?
    - CamperBob2 4y ago
      It depends on where the vehicle is in its life cycle. New Corvettes, for instance, are frequently custom-ordered. The options the buyer has are: 1) Buy off-the-rack from a local Chevy dealer. For the first couple of years after a major revision, the dealers mark up the cars to ridiculous levels. You will pay out the nose for instant gratification. This used to be an issue for high-end sports cars only, but these days even a Honda Civic customer can expect the same treatment. 2) Order from a local dealer. You typically don't have to pay as much for this, depending on your relationship with the dealer. But it can take a very long time for the dealer to get an allocation slot from the factory, especially for smaller stores that don't sell many Corvettes. At the time they take your order (and your deposit), they may not bother telling you that they don't have an allocation yet. You could wait a year or potentially more. 3) Buy off-the-rack from one of a few massive dealers, typically out of state. The dealer's allocation is based on how many Corvettes they sold in previous years, so some dealers specialize in selling from inventory at MSRP or below to achieve the absolute maximize possible sales volume. You will have to drive the car back home or have it shipped. 3a) A subset of these buyers will use a local dealer to accept "courtesy delivery." This means that the car is custom-ordered from the out-of-state volume dealer and shipped directly from the factory to your local dealer for delivery for a relatively-low fixed fee. Local dealers are about as enthusiastic about this as you'd expect, and many will refuse to participate. These buyers save some money initially, but are low on the totem pole when it comes to scheduling service appointments and getting loaner cars. For Corvettes in particular, the custom-order options can be combined with delivery at the factory/museum complex in Bowling Green. European cars are sometimes offered this way as well, where you get to drive the car around for a while before it goes on the boat. Once the car is no longer the hottest new thing on the block, the prices come down for both custom orders and off-the-shelf deals. The same purchase/delivery choices are available, though. Almost everything said about the Corvette purchasing process above applies to new Jeeps and pickups nowadays.
    - agensaequivocum 4y ago
  - jiveturkey 4y ago
    For Toyota, there are no custom orders. You wait until the dealer gets a specific allocation. I imagine that this is due to their precisely tuned JIT manufacturing? For many other brands, your custom order goes to the factory when you make some small commitment.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      JIT can allow customization. Toyota doesn't want to work that way, but others do. John Deere (the company I work for) makes everything to order, when you place your order you are buying a spot on the assembly line for the options you want. We can't even make all the combinationally possible options in a single year for many products (big car makers have much larger volumes). Whatever options you want is what we will put on yours. In order to pull that off our lines have to be flexible. Some options require a special jig, so we have larger factories to put all the jigs near the line, and we allow time for the person at the station to get the right jig out and store it away when done. We could produce product a little faster if there was just one jig on the line, thus the smaller line could move faster (or more likely use that space for more stations), switching the jigs out monthly. It doesn't make sense for us to do that, but for Toyota is probably does. (I'm told Honda has automated the jig replacement so any line can produce anything - but this limits what they can make)
      - jiveturkey 4y ago
        > JIT can allow customization Yep. All the large car manufacturers, and maybe all of them large and small, have JIT supply chains. I didn't mean to imply that JIT couldn't support customization, since obviously others allow you to build custom, just that Toyota's reasons for not doing customization may be linked to their particular JIT choices. And not some other deciding factor. It's worth noting that Toyota suffered least (or last, anyway) with COVID-related supply chain restrictions. Their JIT is a particularly fine-tuned machine. They are the inventors of it, are they not? I read somewhere that many, if not most, others' are a poor simulacrum of Toyota's, and they don't understand it really. Like the way that most people implement microservices, or big-A Agile.
- itsoktocry 4y ago
  >Many if not most automakers, both foreign and domestic, already accept custom orders through their dealers. Exactly. You can order whatever the hell you want from a dealer. So many misinformed comments in these car threads, I'm skeptical people have any experience here. And, in fact, many OEMs are moving in the opposite direction; they offer a couple trims, and that's what you get.

CamperBob2 4y ago

You don't have to do that. Many if not most automakers, both foreign and domestic, already accept custom orders through their dealers. You're not going to like the wait time, though.

agensaequivocum 4y ago
I placed an order for a Sienna a couple of months ago. However, it's more of getting put in line for something similar that is allocated to the dealer. The more specific, the longer the wait is.
- bfdm 4y ago
  But this doesn't make any sense, that's exactly the problem. If you wanted a particular configuration they should direct the plant to assemble that configuration just as soon as they've finished assembling any special configuration requests placed before yours.
  - adhesive_wombat 4y ago
    Possibly they do configurations in phases, so the more unusual your request, the longer it will be before they're building a suitable batch. Maybe they only do adaptive cruise models on Wednesday and wood trim on the third week of the month. Now to get both you have to wait a month and because the ship leaves in 2 weeks, now you have to wait for the next one. Semiconductors are the same. Manufacturer lead times are, even in good times, long for many things because they don't hold stock to cover big orders. If you come along and order a million AD4242WTFBBQ-OMGXXX, one of dozens of variants of a chip, they don't have that boxed and ready. You'll have to wait until the fab is doing that variant again. The problem now is that all the distributor stock that used to keep everyone going while the big orders were scheduled is gone, and the fabs are so slammed that the time to the next free slot is measured in years, not weeks. And that's if the fab is still making that jellybean part at all and hasn't switched to a higher-margin part.
    - pnutjam 4y ago
      I've been looking for a van and I was told that Chevy full size vans are done in the same plant as an SUV. They do a 2 month cycle of vans, then a 4 month cycle of SUV. So if you order at the wrong time, it could be over 4 months to wait.
- yumraj 4y ago
  how about the price? did you get a good price or you had to still pay over MSRP?
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    It depends on where the vehicle is in its life cycle. New Corvettes, for instance, are frequently custom-ordered. The options the buyer has are: 1) Buy off-the-rack from a local Chevy dealer. For the first couple of years after a major revision, the dealers mark up the cars to ridiculous levels. You will pay out the nose for instant gratification. This used to be an issue for high-end sports cars only, but these days even a Honda Civic customer can expect the same treatment. 2) Order from a local dealer. You typically don't have to pay as much for this, depending on your relationship with the dealer. But it can take a very long time for the dealer to get an allocation slot from the factory, especially for smaller stores that don't sell many Corvettes. At the time they take your order (and your deposit), they may not bother telling you that they don't have an allocation yet. You could wait a year or potentially more. 3) Buy off-the-rack from one of a few massive dealers, typically out of state. The dealer's allocation is based on how many Corvettes they sold in previous years, so some dealers specialize in selling from inventory at MSRP or below to achieve the absolute maximize possible sales volume. You will have to drive the car back home or have it shipped. 3a) A subset of these buyers will use a local dealer to accept "courtesy delivery." This means that the car is custom-ordered from the out-of-state volume dealer and shipped directly from the factory to your local dealer for delivery for a relatively-low fixed fee. Local dealers are about as enthusiastic about this as you'd expect, and many will refuse to participate. These buyers save some money initially, but are low on the totem pole when it comes to scheduling service appointments and getting loaner cars. For Corvettes in particular, the custom-order options can be combined with delivery at the factory/museum complex in Bowling Green. European cars are sometimes offered this way as well, where you get to drive the car around for a while before it goes on the boat. Once the car is no longer the hottest new thing on the block, the prices come down for both custom orders and off-the-shelf deals. The same purchase/delivery choices are available, though. Almost everything said about the Corvette purchasing process above applies to new Jeeps and pickups nowadays.
  - agensaequivocum 4y ago
- jiveturkey 4y ago
  For Toyota, there are no custom orders. You wait until the dealer gets a specific allocation. I imagine that this is due to their precisely tuned JIT manufacturing? For many other brands, your custom order goes to the factory when you make some small commitment.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    JIT can allow customization. Toyota doesn't want to work that way, but others do. John Deere (the company I work for) makes everything to order, when you place your order you are buying a spot on the assembly line for the options you want. We can't even make all the combinationally possible options in a single year for many products (big car makers have much larger volumes). Whatever options you want is what we will put on yours. In order to pull that off our lines have to be flexible. Some options require a special jig, so we have larger factories to put all the jigs near the line, and we allow time for the person at the station to get the right jig out and store it away when done. We could produce product a little faster if there was just one jig on the line, thus the smaller line could move faster (or more likely use that space for more stations), switching the jigs out monthly. It doesn't make sense for us to do that, but for Toyota is probably does. (I'm told Honda has automated the jig replacement so any line can produce anything - but this limits what they can make)
    - jiveturkey 4y ago
      > JIT can allow customization Yep. All the large car manufacturers, and maybe all of them large and small, have JIT supply chains. I didn't mean to imply that JIT couldn't support customization, since obviously others allow you to build custom, just that Toyota's reasons for not doing customization may be linked to their particular JIT choices. And not some other deciding factor. It's worth noting that Toyota suffered least (or last, anyway) with COVID-related supply chain restrictions. Their JIT is a particularly fine-tuned machine. They are the inventors of it, are they not? I read somewhere that many, if not most, others' are a poor simulacrum of Toyota's, and they don't understand it really. Like the way that most people implement microservices, or big-A Agile.
itsoktocry 4y ago
>Many if not most automakers, both foreign and domestic, already accept custom orders through their dealers. Exactly. You can order whatever the hell you want from a dealer. So many misinformed comments in these car threads, I'm skeptical people have any experience here. And, in fact, many OEMs are moving in the opposite direction; they offer a couple trims, and that's what you get.