Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike88
^ months? :eek:
I figured maybe a few days or a week. Okay so I'll try not to be too picky.
Next question: say I decide to take a car that the dealer already has on the lot...will I get to test the precise vehicle I want before I agree to purchase it? I see why dealers have tester vehicles, because you wouldn't want ppl testing the vehicle prior to your purchase of it, but at the same time I wouldn't want to buy anything without having driven it (and not just the tester car) first.
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Yes, for the most part ordering a car to your specifications takes a matter of months. Reserving cars in our inventory pipeline for specific customers was one of my main jobs at the dealership. Most of the orders weren't strictly custom orders, they were more like reserving a car that was coming to us anyway. My boss handled the true custom orders. Even for a car that was allocated to our dealership but not built yet, it would take a few months. Of course cars assembled in North America arrive sooner than those built overseas, but it is still a matter of months, either way.
And yes, you always should test drive the exact vehicle you're going to buy. If you're just looking in general (such as trying to decide between a Challenger, Mustang, or Camaro, or even just different configurations for the Camaro) then they might put you in a dedicated test drive vehicle, but that is rare, at least where I come from. Even if they do, when you decide you really do want to buy a specific car, whether it is in the dealer's inventory or you have it ordered, test drive it before you finalize the deal just to make sure there isn't anything immediately noticeable that's wrong with it.
Oh one last thing. If the dealer you go to doesn't have the exact vehicle you're looking for, but another dealer does then often you can have them arrange a dealer trade, and that will take only a few days.