Ford Commercials all touting custom orders

[vezpa]

It sure sucks for people who have a car stolen or totaled out. Insurance companies need to extend the 30 day rental deadline most of them have if orders for a replacement vehicle will be 3-4 months away because very little can be had on a dealer lot.
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[Mymaverick2021]

Yeah but when there are no nearby charging stations you gotta call a tow truck to get home what's the point of an electric vehicle, Plus unless there becomes a major refurbished battery supplier outlet to replace your overly priced battery you might think twice about wanting to be all electric

 

[Old Ranchero]

Consumers only need to know two values over the life of their vehicle ownership, NADA CLEAN trade in and CLEAN retail, depending on the situation. If one takes care of their vehicle, and doesn’t have major imperfections, they should know that average tradein, average retail, or KBB devalues their vehicle, depending on who uses it, car dealer, or an insurance company.

There’s always an outlier that brings down the average, like a beater, or mechanical issues, smokers car, unresolved issues, etc.. Carvana, Carmax and Vroom may be helpful but only to verify the numbers. Nobody has to overpay, they can do fixed pricing via x plan. Taxes and fees always makes it nearly impossible to hit that NADA clean tradein but a miss of $1-2k should be fine for most folks/circumstances, while a $4-5k miss puts folks in negative equity.

FWIW, Not all dealers honor X Plan.

 

[Jakb]

I think custom orders are going to get bigger. As many people who love to haggle there is 10x people who hate dealers and their nonsense.

I love being able to pick exactly what I want without any pointless stupid dealer add-ons, extra features i don't want, markups and other nonsense. The dealer never has the right combo.

Sure there always will be dealer stock and they serve a purpose, but for most folks buying a car can and should be simplified.

I buy almost everything else this way, why should I do it with cars.

 

[NewBernWolf]

There are many incentives right now, Ram has $3750 now. Even explorer has $1000. Incentives are here to stay and will grow once we get out of this pandemic and production gets back to normal.

Possibly. But it makes sense to move in the direction of a build to order business model. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see a lot of companies experimenting with that. The housing industry has been doing that for years.

The technology exists to prefab the base model(s), then add groups of selectable packages and then ship them out. Carmakers don't end up with stock sitting around, and dealerships don't go as deeply into short term debt to cover the cost of dealer stock.

I just think we're at the beginning of the experiment, and there's a lot of tweeking still to do in order to make it work. We're the first line mice in the lab.

 

[NewBernWolf]

Yeah but when there are no nearby charging stations you gotta call a tow truck to get home what's the point of an electric vehicle, Plus unless there becomes a major refurbished battery supplier outlet to replace your overly priced battery you might think twice about wanting to be all electric

I wonder if this was the argument back when cars started having gasoline engines.

 

[Mymaverick2021]

Yea but at least you can always find a nearby gas station

 

[JBnorthTX]

It sure sucks for people who have a car stolen or totaled out. Insurance companies need to extend the 30 day rental deadline most of them have if orders for a replacement vehicle will be 3-4 months away because very little can be had on a dealer lot.

I expect dealer stocks will eventually increase when the supply chain problems improve. With the build to order emphasis they won't go back to pre COVID inventories, but dealers will want to be able to take care of customers who can't wait.

 

[JBnorthTX]

I wonder if this was the argument back when cars started having gasoline engines.

The charging infrastructure needs to improve before electric becomes the only option.

 

[NewBernWolf]

The charging infrastructure needs to improve before electric becomes the only option.

Or vehicle manufacturers will follow Tesla, and incentivize hotels, restaurants, and other places where drivers stop to install quick chargers. If gas stations aren't making money off of gas, one would think they'd evolve.

We all know this will take more 20 years to become the standard, given our current lack of infrastructure as well as the number of 'gas only' engines on the road though.

 

[notfast]

I just saw this incentive while perusing the Ford website.

*Place a new vehicle retail order for a 2022 Mustang, Bronco™ Sport, EcoSport, Escape, Edge, Explorer, Expedition, F-150, Ranger or Transit Connect through a local authorized Ford Dealer on or before 1/3/22 and receive a $1,000 Bonus Cash offer. Offer not available on Super Duty® , Maverick, Mustang Mach-E, Bronco™ SUV, Transit, Mustang Shelby® GT500®, Mustang Mach 1, Ford GT, F-150 Tremor®, F-150 Raptor or E-Transit. See dealer for complete details and eligibility.

 

[WesM]

I suspect the move is because keeping 100eds of vehicles on the lot is EXPENSIVE. Beside the insurance dealers pay on all those vehicles and the literally millions of dollars they have tied up in capital and the taxes they have to pay on inventory... lot of reasons to go to an order based system.

I don't know if any of those expenses are shared with Ford directly, but I suspect some are. So Ford is all to happy to only ship what they can make. Maybe it will change when Ford is able to keep up with orders?

 

[Down]

Nobody has to overpay, they can do fixed pricing via x plan.

FWIW, Not all dealers honor X Plan.

So you find another dealer. Easy peasy.

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