Hacker News Reader

Comment by technothrasher | Hacker News Reader

I ordered a new Porsche SUV in the middle of December. It just got offloaded from the ship at port today, so I should finally have it in a couple weeks. But it will be missing some of the electronics, such as the electric steering wheel adjustment due to chip shortages.

My poor sister-in-law also thought she ordered a Toyota in December. But as it turns out, the dealership just took advantage of her and told her they ordered her a car when really she gave the dealership a $500 deposit to let her know if a car ever comes in that matches what she wanted.

View on HN

Doesn't help that a few thousand Porsches on the way to the US sunk to the bottom of the ocean a few months ago. https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a39139830/salvage-oper...

I had been shopping since January for a 2022 Tundra. I talked to salespeople at probably 75 dealerships on the east coast/mid-atlantic.

Two of them said they could order me what I wanted, with a large deposit and I’d have to wait up to 90 days.

The remaining all said basically they’re at the mercy of what Toyota makes and decides to allocate to their dealership.

> The remaining all said basically they’re at the mercy of what Toyota makes and decides to allocate to their dealership.

This is what the guy at my sister-in-law's dealership said after I got on the phone with him and asked him what the heck was going on with her order when what she was telling me didn't make sense. Would have been nice for him to admit that up front instead of just taking her money and smiling.

What one salesman told me is that they do have a system where they can enter allocation requests.

So they can enter into the system they want a '22 Tundra Crew Max with an exterior color of Lunar Rock and this/these packages.

Toyota won't specifically build that, but in theory if there is one built matching that requirement they should get it as an allocation. In reality, he said they never get their allocation requests.

Some dealerships (the 2 I mentioned in my research) tell people they're "ordering" when really they're just "requesting allocation."

I think you’re better off getting on a waitlist and seeing what allocations come in. I was in the market for a Highlander and my local Toyota dealership that’s selling at MSRP had 0 on the lot. I got on the list and the week after they got two in. They called 26 people and I was one of the only ones able to come in right when they called, so me and another guy got the two.

Yeah, that's how I ended up getting one. Working from home and living 5 minutes from the dealership.

The sales manager told me while they finished prepping the truck, their system is so messed up right now they don't even really know when they're getting deliveries. Trucks loaded with cars just show up randomly on the lot and they work the phones to get them sold.

That's pretty normal for the Japanese manufacturers, especially on anything they build in Japan. It has always been the domestic manufacturers who were willing to build you a car exactly to your specifications.

That’s US specific thing.

I ordered a RAV4 PHEV (prime in US) last year and it was a factory order from Japan. Toyota Europe app even tells you when it’s built and then tracks the shipment to your local Toyota dealership.

One of the only cars my local Toyota dealer has is a V6 CrewMax for.....$56k

I ended up lucking into one at MSRP that pretty much checked every box in the 'need' category at a dealership 5 minutes from my house. They wouldn't take reservations or holds, just happened to be able to get there quickly whenever a truck rolled in with Tundras on it.

Another dealership offered me a TRD Pro Tundra, with a $16k dealer markup. I passed, but from what the salesman told me later the very next person (I was #1 on the list) he called bought it with that markup without hesitation.

> I ordered a new Porsche SUV in the middle of December

I just ordered a 911. It's a July build scheduled to be in September (let's hope it actually arrives). I had a Macan S that got held up in port in 2019 for months (once it arrived).

I am curious what was the 'above MSRP' that you paid when you ordered?

I’m actually paying MSRP without any mark up. I called around until I found a dealer who would be reasonable.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com