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Unlike some other manufacturers, I was told that BRZ vehicles are not produced to match specific customer orders. The factory produces the vehicles based on estimated demand, production line considerations and other factors. After the vehicles are completed and loaded on to the ship, vehicle orders are matched against the completed vehicles and VIN numbers are assigned to the VONs. I don't know how they decide dealer order, but I was told that if a dealer is entitled to one vehicle for the month, Subaru looks to see if that dealer's earliest unfilled VON can be filled with an available vehicle on the ship or in port. If the dealer's earliest ordered VON cannot be matched exactly with a completed vehicle, Subaru tries to exactly match the dealer's next ordered VON. This is the reason VIN numbers are assigned after the vehicles are produced and this is also the reason that first in line at a dealer will not always mean that that person will take delivery of the vehicle before others from that dealer. That also may be why some VIN numbers have not yet been assigned for early orders - if there is a high demand for WRB Limited, for example, but the factory only built 24% (or some other number of this specification) it might take a while for the vehicles produced to balance out with the actual orders. As a result, an order placed a week ago for a less popular combination (say a black LTD with AT) might get assigned a VIN and get delivered well before somebody who placed an order many weeks ago.
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