From a customer's standpoint, I can totally agree with what a lot of you are saying; it makes sense to order a car from a lot of differant dealers and just buy it from whichever one gets it first.

A problem with that though: depending on how many dealerships you order from, you could have a few $grand$ in deposits floating around out there (a few of you have said you didn't leave a deposit to order the car but I've never heard of that, anything's possible though).

What I would recomend is to call every dealership in your area and ask them what they already have allocated to them; don't tell them what you are looking for, just tell them you want a tC (or xB or xA), and ask them what they have on the way. If you tell them you want a White, 5-Speed, tC, you'd be suprised how many dealers have that exact car that will "be here real soon." It's just a ploy to get you into the dealership.

If you find a dealership that mentions the car you want then go ahead and put a deposit down on it. But in the more likely case, you'll have to place a new order. If this is the case, find out what the biggest dealership in your area is (they get the most cars), there has been enough posted on here about the whole allocation process so I won't go into the whole thing (even though a lot of the info on here is wrong), but basically the bigger the dealership is, the easier it will be for them to get your car since they get more cars overall.

Something that has been said all over the site (and this post) is that dealerships only get whatever Toyota sends them, this is only half true; Toyota makes a pool of cars available to each reigon of the country and all the dealerships get to pick from those cars and only those cars. If your dealership has a dilligent Scion mngr. who submits his allocation prefrences on time, then you have a better chance of getting your car sooner.

These dealerships who are lying to people about the wait time for their cars are probably doing other things wrong when it comes to Scion's rules so they have probably been penalized one or more times (in quarterly reveiws, Scion inspects every Scion dept. in the country and if they are not covanant compliant, they lose 30% of their allocation for the next 4 months or until they fix their sh*t. Basically, if they get 10 cars a month and are found to be non-compliant, they will only get 7 from then on. So dealerships that are not run well and are not honest will more than likely have a harder time getting your car anyway.

So I hope that provides some insight, any ?'s about any of this stuff, let me know...

 

I ordered an indigo ink 5spd, no side airbags on Sept. 28 and the dealership called me yesterday Oct. 11 and told me that it was in, so thats exactly 2 weeks for me to get it and I'm in Pittsburgh.

 

Good advice, and it's important to know that you can't necessarily tell who sells more cars by looking at the lot. The dealer who got my car moves probably the second-most Scions in the area, and they're a much smaller dealership in size than the one who couldn't seem to get any cars. That's why it's important to ask how many cars they got in their last couple of allocations, and where you'll be on their preference list.

Yes, a dealer may know that there are usually 25 flint mica 5-speeds per regional allocation, but that doesn't help them GET one if 50 dealers all want one. Some dealers have a greater CHANCE of getting one, though (favored because of sales and/or how well they obey covenants).

 

It all depends on where you live. You could have gotten your S2000 here in less than a week because that was the exact car I was looking at when the '04's came out.

My tC only took two weeks, but I got in fairly early. The wait for a tC here now varies greatly. About 6 weeks seems to be the average.

 

The pure pricing BS that Scion uses is what you should be using to screw the dealer right about now. Look around at other dealers in your immediate (or not so immediate) area for the car you want. I wasn't happy with the dealer fees and wait in Tucson for a car, so I spent a few hours on the phone and found a dealer about 3 hours away that not only had the car I wanted but didn't want to ___ plunge me for another $300 in dealer fees. I had the car I wanted THAT AFTERNOON after driving out there, and didn't have to deal with this type of crap.

Get your deposit back, and start shopping for a dealer.

 

That's not screwing the dealer, that's being a smart shopper and not screwing YOURSELF.

 

Sorry dude, part of me feels for your situation, but this is mostly YOUR fault. You should not have sat on your butt waiting 3 months for your car. You clearly didnt pressure them to make your order a priority of theirs, you also didnt shop around to other dealers having them go look for your car either. Its obvious they are content to string you along knowing that when they finally get around to getting your car, that you'll be there waiting on them. And they are right. They could trade for your exact car right away if they wanted to, but they dont because why should they go through that effort if you'll just be sitting around anyway.

Go out there and be a real consumer for a change. Put some real pressure on them, and shop around. Make other dealers go on the hunt for your car and demand that you want it now. You dont have to sit there and take that abuse.