I understand the two are different and special orders get built before allocation orders. My local dealer tells me I need to come to him by Jan 27th so he can place my order for a car to be delivered in May. He is reculant to say if it is his normal monthly allocation or a special order. He is willing to take a few dollars off MSRP.

The only other dealer in the state is 40 miles from my house and he tells me he will place a special order. He tells me that he needs to place the order by Jan 20th. The special order wll be built in March and here by the end of April or first part of May. He is not willing to do much with MSRP though.

Does anyone have good information on how the process works? My lease is up in May and I don't mind if it comes in early or a few weeks late but I definitely don't want to order from the first dealer and find out his build is actually April and not March.

Your thoughts...thanks.

 

TimboIS , you want to take this one?

UPBull340: , There is a bunch of very good info and advice up here from very knowledgeable people. Just look back in DEC, or the first part of this month. I'm still waiting on a IS350, ordered in OCT. 2005. supposedly arriving in Feb. I don't know. Supposedly, special orders do go to the front of a production run, according to my dealer in North Carolina. Besides, only 40 miles to your dealer, try 179 miles one way to your closest friendly Lexus dealer. Not many dealers in the Appalachian mountain area.
Ordering seems to be a black box process with Lexus, put down a $500 deposit, order the car you want, and wait. MSRP was a good deal back in October, so if your getting any off the sticker, that's gravy.
TimboIS can tell you more.

 

TimboIS seems to know the most about this but I would go with the one that is least expensive regardless of the dates.

 

In my case, I placed a special order in Oct. I had to go to 3 dealers before finding one that would do it. Now I realize why the other two declined. Lexus makes it difficult to place orders. It's a complex and frustrating process for both the dealer and the customer. They're not very well setup for orders as other companies such as BMW, Ford, etc. They can't track, they only know when the "preference" has been accepted by the manufacturing system. In my case it was just over 11 weeks to get pulled into the build system. At that point its about 3-5 weeks before it shows up at the dealer. It's very frustrating for both the customer and the dealer. The customer wants information (status) the dealer can't provide. You just have to place your order and wait it out, same for the dealer.

I had to have Sport+Nav+ML (at the minumum). Now they're building cars like that (albeit a small %). If that cofig was available Oct 14, I would have probably settled on one of those. But since they didn't know if, or even when, those would be coming, I might as well order exactly what I wanted.

My advice. If there's a car that configured pretty close to what you want...take it...now!

 

Ugh... that's a heck of a wait. The unfortunately problem for me is that I have yet to see anything configured remotely close to the way I want it, meaning:

SGM
Cashmere
Sport Pkg
The END

So I'll be special ordering and sitting on my hands. And to be honest, I'm not really in a huge rush, so I guess I'll live. Gives me time to save some additional money to put down anyway I suppose.

And since I'm paying invoice, I really can't complain.

 

I purchased an IS350 on 12/30/05. My dealer told me it would be in in 2-3 weeks and he would call to keep me updated.
I haven't heard from him yet.

Matador Red/Cashmere/Premium Pkg & Spyder Rims.