no special order for FR-S?
 

I put down a deposit for to order a white MT 2 months ago.
today i finally tracked down the sales guy and he told me that
he did not order the car for me. there is no way to make a special
order from the factory. they are waiting for allocation and
if something matches i will get it. my translation is that i could
be waiting forever if this dealer never gets a white MT.

is this true? no special order?

Call another local dealer and ask? I don't know how Scion is handling their order system but it seems like the Salesman isn't taking you seriously.

I picked up my new FR-S just yesterday and it was only the 3rd FR-S the dealer ever received. The sales rep. told me they can't order them that they are allocated so many based on an unknown formula. It was just by chance that I called them about two weeks ago and told them I was looking for a red manual transmission and they told me they had one coming and I put the deposit on it then.

If your dealer wanted to put any effort in getting you a car, they would've swapped their allocation for something that matches your specs with another dealer a long time ago.

I would start looking for another dealer.

Not sure by "special order", but you can go Scion site and build your own FR-S. It'll take longer time than some of the cars that comes in into the dealer... but it'll guarantee your FR-S will come

There is no factory special ordering. It's all allocation. Basically if you want for example a 6MT Raven, then you make a down-payment and get on a list. Once there is a landed 6MT Raven that is available - if you're at the top of the list - the dealer will be able to allocate it for you.

That's what I did. Took 6 weeks. :)

You can configure an FR-S, then when you're done with the process it forces you to pick a dealer, and shows you what they have in stock, paying no attention whatsoever to the information you put into the configurator.

Oh really? I haven't tried it. I just saw the "Build your own", so I just assumed... I guess, it'll be like that til mid of next yr?

The dealer still gets that info. It's their own motive to SWAT (sell what's available today) but you're more than welcome to get in line for the specific car you want.

Scion does not take special orders. The "Deposits" are treated as reservations based on a list of units sent in from the factory. We can control the preference (auto/manual mix, color mix, etc) BUT the region is still the one ordering and assigning to the dealership. It's based on earned units and selling performance. I explained how it works in an older thread but it seems to be deleted =\

So, just like Toyota dealers, Scion dealers are divided into different regions. Based on the number of units that region sells, you will earn a percentage of incoming units for that region. Then it trickles to each dealer. The higher the market share of the dealership, the more cars they will have allocated.

I'll use the Los Angeles Region as an example since we do about 20% or so of Scions in the US. I will then use Longo Scion as an example since we do about 8% of the Scions in the SoCal region.

This is the first FR-S allocation we received for the SoCal region back in May.

This allocation (to the region) included:
iQ: 15 (2% of total cars allocated)
xD: 128 (20% of total cars allocated)
xB: 179 (28% of total cars allocated)
tC: 177 (28% of total cars allocated)
FR-S: 136 (21% of total cars allocated)
---------
Total vehicles in this allocation 635 units.

There are about 75 Toyota/Scion dealers in the region, so in a communist world, each dealer would get about 8-9 cars. However, the allocation is performance based so dealers that push Scion (ie Longo) will earn more while smaller dealers earn less.

In this example allocation, we earned 54 units (roughly 8.5% of the region's allocation). Our break down was:

iQ: 1 (6.6% of incoming iQs)
xD: 14 (10.9% of incoming xDs)
xB: 14 (7.8% of incoming xDs)
tC: 15 (8.5% of incoming tCs)
FR-S: 10 (7.3% of incomnig FR-S')

So that is our base allocation. Sometimes we get additional bonus units to help out if they know we needed specific vehicles. IIRC, with this allocation, we receive a bonus of 7 FR-S, making it 17 units- I don't know how many "bonus cars" were available in total to the region, but yea- definitely a hook up since the normal bonus is must smaller.

So the original break down of what they gave us before they modded to what we needed:
5 Auto: 1 Firestorm, 1 Raven, 2 Argento, 1 Whiteout
5 Manual: 2 Argento, 1 Hot Lava, 1 Whiteout, 1 Asphalt

Unfortunately, our first 9 orders were all manual transmission... 8 of 10 were Whiteout... hahaha. So we requested a change and some things changed, and the added bonus units rounded everything out. Bonus units included:

7 Manual: 2 Raven, 2 Whiteout, 3 Asphalt

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So that's how allocation works. Cars are assigned and dealers can request changes, but swaps can only be made within the dealers in your district before final assignment. That's why if you ask anyone that I've helped, I use the word "reservation" more so than order because that's what it basically is. Holding your place in line for the color(s) you picked and assigning the cars as they come in based on the color preference.

So it does (usually) pay off to work with a bigger dealer when it comes to Scion... but it can reach extremes too (order list as of 8/30: 38 manual orders plus a few automatic. Of the 38 manual, 25 are for whiteout so the wait for that will be ridiculous. Hot Lava and, now, Ultramarine buyers have been lucky as we've just about fulfilled all those requests and they are coming in relatively quickly (6-8 weeks).

Great breakdowns, thanks for re-explaining!

do you know how many of those want a raven mt? i wonder what number i am out of the 38...

That suck's I called 27 dealers on Saturday, Picked up my new ride on Sunday. I had to drive 130 miles to get my car.

But.... You got your car! And I assume got to drive it 130 miles home!

:burnrubber: