MR_F1

So there's the question, how did this occur? As far as I can discern, the dealer is only involved to take delivery of the car. How does this end up in his inventory? Furthermore, isn't a total of about $60k due before the car is even built?

G Star

iTrader: (2)

Kind of like chocolate milkshake...very unattractive. I can see how nobody wants to buy this...

Gojirra99

Interior combo would have been fine with me if it's saddle, this one is just a bit too orange, but the exterior color does not go well with the LFA, though I am sure it will be a nice looking paint itself in person, and will suit some other car ...

S2000toIS350

F1

At this point we don't know if Chambers ordered this himself or not.

If he did, he plunked down the $60K (the Frist $10K followed by the $50K to spec the car) and the car showed up.

If it was a customer, either that person took a haircut or the dealer may have the car on the showroom as a consignment of sorts. If/when the car sells, the customer gets some/all of the deposit back.

Thinking back, when I put my first deposit down, there was no language that said if I bailed I would take a loss. I got my $10K back with no questions asked. I think for folks who received allocations after me, the language was changed to say that if you put the second deposit down, you had to take delivery or lose your deposit.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

without going into details, this is not the first time that a car becomes available after a customer (or someone) bails. probably something we won't understand, but for the rich, maybe they feel better off "losing" 50-60k on deposit than to spring out another 300k on something they don't like / want.

i guess we will never know what happened and why, but i won't be surprised if someone ordered this car and he's not happy about the setup, so he either bailed or asked to change to a different combo.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

some very good points there. i think this will be a little tough combo to sell. i wonder if eventually incentives will be on (probably not publicly) this car. that will be bad and put a ding on the overall resale.

the fact that JM has trouble selling that white (easy combo) lfa for what? months? that's one indication

MR_F1

It sucks that there are people elsewhere in the world who would pay 2-3x what is paid for an LFA in the US, but couldn't get allocation, only to have these turn up on dealer show rooms and sit. Huge blunder by Lexus.

S2000toIS350

F1 Agreed, but as I have mentioned before, Japanese companies are huge on planning.
Once the plan is agreed to, good luck changing it.

gengar

Well I mean, it's brown... why is this surprising?

BTW, this is one of my favorite threads about the color brown on a car, also dealing with a withdrawn deposit:

http://www.planet-9.com/cayman-boxst...your-gain.html

jpvarghese

iTrader: (1)

I think buyers are facing resale anxiety before delivery. If what you say is true, that is a very bad sign.

07grIS350

It could be, but I think with the make to order LFAs still available in the US, the showroom car would be hard to sell.
It's also not unusual to see expensive cars in showrooms for a couple years.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

completely agreed. in some other regions lfa seems to be in great demand, a simple shift (even locally in japan) would have solved / fixed the problem.

very true too, japanese culture and mentality in business, once something is decided and signed off, that will likely be the end of it

i actually thought about that. i wonder if any buyers are thinking about backing out because of the yet-still available allocations and thus the resale. and yes, s2000 already confirmed that the white lfa is still available at JM lexus. i can't remember when it was available, but it has to be at least 3 months

i am thinking the same too. if today i can still order a lfa to my exact spec, why would i want anything on the floor unless

1) it's discounted enough to get my interest
2) i want the car now instead of a few months out

just curious, what kind of expensive cars you talking about? in the 400k range?

07grIS350

No not even in that range. I was looking for the LX460 a while ago, and AutoTrader website showed a few of them a couple of MYs old still being advertised as brand new. I also personaly saw an 99 NSX on the Acura showroom in 2000 while looking for an TL.

gengar

Ya, we've gone over this. Obviously Lexus thinks it's important to have that increased allocation in the US for whatever reason, even if they go unsold.

As I've said many times on this forum before, I'm not a fan of limited production runs - and in the same way, I'm not a fan of restricted geographic allocation (this is one of the reasons I never bought a Ferrari, after all). In my opinion, cars should go to people who want them, period - and car companies shouldn't meddle with how customers get them.

This could play a big factor if people ordered a car combo or options that they wound up not liking, or if they decided they'd rather have a Nürburgring Edition instead. If the order books were closed, we'd have a different situation on our hands. The reality is that even a $60,000 deposit is not a huge issue when we're talking about paying $400,000+ OTD for a bespoke car.

An easy way to put the comparison is to ask if I would pay $60,000 more for my LFA in my preferred specs compared to this Pearl Brown one, and of course I would.

Certainly, I suppose someone could just buy and repaint this one.... Redoing the interior might be pretty pricy, though.

Just for the record, doing a search of dealer inventories for the GT2 RS shows 12 just from US dealers on the first 2 search result pages, even discounting for duplicate search results. I'm sure there are more, but I didn't bother going beyond 2 pages.

BNR34

iTrader: (1)

Just hit Autoblog, they said the guy who ordered it back out of it, who knows if it is true, it could be for any reasons.

http://www.autoblog.com/2011/07/07/e...s-look-copper/