Quote:
Originally Posted by fredzy
I suppose I don't want to believe Toyota knew what demand was going to be because that means that unless supply chain somehow forced them to make more AT's, a big part of the problem manual seekers are facing was created deliberately. Why would they do that?
I was wondering how things went with the first gen. I was busy following news of the next generation WRX when BRZ/86 launched and only heard a little here and there about it being hard to get, markups etc. By the time my WRX came in April 2014 I think things had settled down a lot. There was a manual BRZ that sat in the showroom for a while.
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There were several very different circumstances with the first gen.
The FRS had two versions and two only. You could have a MT or an AT. No trim level complexity meant far less shopping for that exact set of preferences. When just looking for a certain colour and tranny set up it is going to be much much easier since they can make more of each.
The people that ordered ahead knew it was going to be while before they got the first gen cars. People ordering the second gen, as a group, expected them to be available immediately upon announcement. When considering the events of 2021 this was not a realistic expectation.
The 2012-2013 production number for the 2013 MY FRS was pushing 20,000 units (assuming they sold all that they made which is safe). The sales (so production) for the 2022 is a handful over 2,000. This is probably not even close to what they would have planned. Even without removing casual sales (people that were not looking for one but bought anyway) from the mix it would mean that there was no hope in hell of meeting demand. Then you have to take that number and divide it by two for trim levels, divide again by 2 for trannys (I know it wasn't 50/50 but bear with me here) and then by 7 for colours and the odds of any dealer close enough to you getting the exact specs you want are extremely low. This is amplified even more when you consider that since there are 1,500 Toyota dealers in the USA those 2,000 cars sold are stretched pretty thin as far as ordering goes. Now there is no doubt that many dealers had several orders but there would also have been just as many that had none so if there had been even 10,000 cars made there would have been enough to go around and a few left in stock.
Yes there were a few cases of mark up reported back in 2013 but they were rare. Goes back to the whole idea that if nobody pays it and moves on then it goes away. Anybody that paid markup really, really, REALLY had to have the car right then. The funny part is that if you went back and looked at who paid the markup you will see that most of them had the car a year or less and then moved onto the next bigger and newer thing to come out. I bought my March 14 build date 14 in late July of 14 after it had sat in the showroom for almost 5 months. Scion was fixed pricing but I got almost $5,000 worth of add ons that were on the car for display for free so there was no markup by then!
All in all it shows that under "normal" circumstances and conditions the Toyota system can and does work. This just ain't normal times so all bets are off.