I found this on the gr86 Facebook forum. The guy does a good job describing the subaru order process. Thought it was worth posting...
"Subaru’s system is hands down better than Toyotas but as dealers get more orders their own store’s ETA’s will get pushed back compared to another store who hasn’t taken much orders. This backlog of orders is naturally going to happen at stores selling at MSRP or better prices because the orders get piled on as more people find out you can get the car for a good deal at the said dealership.
First off, without getting too technical…a dealership does not choose which cars land in their inventory. It is determined by bigger and higher corporate people and decisions.
The only exception where the dealer can “choose” which cars get put into the inventory is when a customer “orders” the car. By “ordering,” this means the customer is choosing a configuration of a dealership’s future car.
When customers place an order, a vehicle order number (VON) is generated which is proof the *configuration* the customer chose was officially recorded and requested from Subaru. Something also generated that the dealer sees and customer usually doesn’t is the Month of Allocation. This is not the ETA, it is the month which the unit & its configuration that was ordered is counted toward.
One dealer cannot get 200 cars and the other dealers get 10 cars. There is corporate data that determines the max and minimum amount of cars a dealer gets in a given month. This is what the term “allocation” refers to.
So when someone “orders” a car from a dealer they *burn* one of dealer’s future units/stock in the future allocation when they choose the configuration. If you ordered October and the dealer has a Jan ETA then the means the orders before you have burned up November, December, etc.
Another thing, the build date doesn’t show up to dealerships. If a car is allocated for January, then the factory will find a MATCH to fulfill that order that was “promised” for January. So your car could already be built and is just waiting for the Matching process.
Check out the document below for more info.
You cannot check a VIN yourself but you can ask your salesperson about the information in the document to get a better sense of when your car will get to the dealer."