Custom Ordering A new Car

So ever since I was at the NE auto show I have had the New 4 door Dodge Charger on my mind. However all my looking has not been able to find the car that I saw a at the show. The people at the show kept calling it "the black edition". Looking at the Dodge web site and surfing the web has come up empty.

Basically the car I saw and really liked was a metallic black 4 door charger with a black leather interior and the nav package (no entertainment package). The exterior had black wheels with no chrome. There was a small spoiler on the trunk. The car had the 300HP V6. I don't know if it was RWD or AWD.

So I was coming home from a job yesterday and saw a dodge dealer and decided to stop in. The sales woman was very nice, low key and was not pushing me to purchase anything. The biggest problem was they only had one charger on the lot and it was a stripped down one (sticker was 28K). She told me that up in NE most lots don't have many (if any) chargers on the lot especially this time of year as winter is coming and they generally they sell mostly small SUV's and crossovers anyway and lastly they are waiting on the 2013 model line up. This did make me think that if I did fond a charger to my spec on a lot in the NE I may be able to get a really good deal on it.

We got talking and I explained that I had seen this car at the show and what not and that I wanted to get some literature from the dealer so i could piece together what I wanted as close to that car as possible.

She then told me that I can custom order a car from Dodge. I thought I miss heard her but no she said that I can order a car exactly how I want it with what ever options / colors I want and they will build it for me. It typically takes between 6 and 8 weeks for delivery. She went on to say that most people that are purchasing new cars need it asap adn as a result have to "settle" for what is on the lot or what can be had from dealers in the surrounding area and they can not wait the 6-8 weeks.

I did not know you could still do this. I always thought that the days of filling out an order sheet were gone.

The down side to it is that I suspect that you will pay list but getting the exact car I want made for me and not having to compermise as to the options seems worth it.

Is this an anomaly? Can all dealers do this? Did I just happen to stumble on a dealer that has an in with the factory?

We did that with our Terrain - white, Brown leather, white door handles, chrome roof rack, non-chrome grille, 19 inch Machined alloys, stereo package, but no touch screen, tow package, v6/AWD/Hydraulic power steering...

Some of these were kinda bundled, but not as tightly as other dealers (cheby for instance). The dealer also said theyd do other things as add ons, but keep what they swapped out, and give us the difference. It took about 10 weeks (apparently terrains were selling like crazy at that time)

You can do that with quite a few cars I think, but every offer that you ever hear about includes the line "must take retail delivery from dealer stock". That means no rebates or incentives on a custom order and you'll pay top dollar.

pinchvalve wrote: You can do that with quite a few cars I think, but every offer that you ever hear about includes the line "must take retail delivery from dealer stock". That means no rebates or incentives on a custom order and you'll pay top dollar.

not always true...we got a few discounts, but none of the big ones. Basically, we got the teensy rebate for a base terrain...a few C notes IIRC. The legalese is what they advertise so that if youre really a douche, they can stand their ground, legally. Most stealerships will work with you a little on deals/rebates if its gonna close the deal.

4cylndrfury wrote: We did that with our Terrain

Wow, I had to look that up. I didn't even know what a Terrain was.

You DO NOT have to pay sticker when you order a car!

I've done it multiple times. It's true you might not get some of the % incentives because they tend to be tied to dealer stock (although sometimes they'll still give it to you), but you can dicker the same way you'd do it for an instock car.

The advantage you have is that they know they have an immediate delivery and they have no floor planning (or % charges) of their own to accrue. This means they will have less invested in the car and therefore can afford to take less for the car and still make the same money.

Don't think you are a second class citizen just because you are ordering. Since you "don't have to have it in a hurry" you have the advantage in that you can dicker till you get the deal you want. I got $15,000 off the sticker on the last car I ordered.

I got almost $6,000 off the 1999 Miata I ordered and the furrin' car dealers usually deal less than the domestic ones. Go get 'em boy!!

I have never bought a car off the lot, I've always ordered what I wanted. I can't understand why any one would ever settle for what's there, unless it's just wha tthey want.

We still got the rebates when we ordered our Solstice GXP vert and we got it exactly like we wanted.

When we decided to buy a GXP coupe we had to take what we could get because the dealer had it on order and no new orders were being accepted (Pontiac was getting the axe at that point). Luckily they optioned it almost exactly like we would have.

Another option is to build out the car exactly like you want it on paper, then let the dealer search other dealers for you. That's how we got my wife's new Wrangler. She wanted the Winter Chill color and the Arctic package, but that color was discontinued in March, so we couldn't order it. We had to find it through existing dealer stock. He finally found one in MS and had it trailered in. It had everything she wanted.....the only think it lacked for me was the 3.73 gears and hitch.

All the car websites have a "build and price" function where you choose from the menu.
We just did this for a new Ford Escape for my M-I-L. Got it exactly the way she wanted it (within the option combinations allowed.)

Yeah, I'm getting ready to order a new car. And they gave me a price well below MSRP and said I'd be eligible for whatever the rebate is when the car shows up.

COuld go up or down between now and then.

We ordered a 1994 Blazer S10 in August of 1993. We got it in less than 4 weeks and I believe it might have been one of the first made right after the Labor Day holiday in 1993.

At the time GM would honor any rebates when you took delivery.

I was told by Ford that the rebate offered when I ordered would be honored, but if the rebate got better before delivery, I would get the better. If the rebate got worse, I still stayed with the rebate offered at time of order.

I ordered my truck in 2002 and I actually checked the boxes. When I ordered my Mazda5 last year there was not a way to do that so I had to get some things I didn't want to get what I did want. Most of them let you order within their little pre packaged lists; which isn't really good enough if you want something specific.

Ford will let you order a car to your specs too.

Visited a few korean dealerships and was flat out told NO I could not do that.

Most larger dealers will do a search for you, typically 200 mile radius around here... but the more ya spend I'd bet they'd extend it further. Also, if they can't find the exact fit for you, try looking into the mfg. parts bin catalog.

Generally yes, you can build to order, your choices just aren't as good as they were 30 years ago. Damn near everything is in some package. You get 5 things you don't want for the 2 you do.

This is what most people have to do to get a manual transmission in a BMW. You hardly ever find one in stock. I'm like Carguy, other than that they know you really want the car, why should you have to pay list? There should be extra leverage for a discount in telling a dealer it's sold before he has to pay for it.

I special ordered a car once, that I remember, back in 1972. The only "downside" to a dealer is if you order something really unusual that someone else wouldn't want if you backed out of your deal/tried to re-neg on your contract. It could be you will pay a fairly decent deposit to get a special order.

ALL the "Big 3" dealers have a bit more leeway on getting a custom order vehicle, while the foreign dealers it's getting so that all you can specify anymore is color/wheels/and trim level.

That "Black package" on the Charger may not be a orderable car but just something pieced together for customer reaction.

I know you can do that with a lot of Fords. They've got rid of a lot of the accessories on the Ford site though, that kind of sucks. Oh well, you can still trick it out and make it look pretty good.

I custom ordered three cars. ZX2SR Jeep Liberty Fiesta SE

Oh forgot the Contour SE

The wifes last 3 Buicks and the the new Subaru we are waiting for now have all been custom orders. And, Yes, you can negotiate prices on custom orders.

One trend that I have noticed is that the manufacturers are doing more bundling of options than they used to. Our latest effort which ended with ordering a Subaru Legacy found that if you wanted the Navigation option you had to take a moonroof with it. And that wasn't just with Subaru. All the other cars on our final list were the same way.

We got lucky when we got the wife's car. We found the car exactly like we wanted minus 1 small option at the port. So we pinged all of the volvo dealers in all of the texas major cities and worked out my best deal. Ended up getting $4800 off on a $30K sticker.

In reply to chuckles:

Further, with BMW, Porsche, Mercedes, Volvo et al, you can get european delivery on your newly custom-built car. Order your M3, tour BMW Welt, get the keys to your car, see the Autobahn and lap the Nurburgring, then drop the car off at some agreed-upon point, fly home, and catch up with your new car a month or so later.

you generally can't really add the options you want- but you can choose the color and pick from a few different option packages...

i almost custom ordered a brand new car once- a 2002 Camaro Z28. the one i wanted was just a basic Z that pretty much only came with the LS1, 6 speed, 3.42 posi rear, 17" wheels, SLP exhaust, and Hurst shifter. the salesman kept trying to steer me to one of the 5 SS models they had in stock and couldn't grasp why i didn't want the auto trans and leather seats.. he really gave me a weird look when i asked for a basic am/fm stereo, crank up windows, and a rubber floor mat instead of carpet (sadly, they didn't offer any of those things..)...

anyways, we got on the computer and put my car together- silver with a black interior. the price came up to just north of $23k, and he did say that i could get about $5k in rebates and what not and they didn't even want a deposit or down payment as long as i financed it thru them.. that's $18k for what would have probably been the most badass new car within 50 miles of my house...

i printed it out and thought about it for the weekend.. i wisely figured out that i couldn't afford it because i'd rather keep the house i had just bought.. but it was cool knowing that i could have gotten one badass brand new Camaro that would have been one of the last ones built since this was about 2 weeks before GM stopped taking orders for F bodies before they stopped making them.