(05-10-2011 08:28am)defender_uk Wrote: (04-10-2011 11:50pm)Token Wrote: I feel bad for those who's orders have been delayed but this who,e experience is all part of being an early adopter. In the case of the Evoque, the marketing team have just been too good!!
Sorry Token....I could not disagree more! This is not part of the 'experience' of being an early adopter. This is a shambles and utter disgrace. This is the fourth 'early adoption' for me from LR...and this is the worst by far. You don't hear of such chronic incompetence from other major manufacturers....
I don't hear of other manufacturers, you're right...but, then again if I hadn't ordered an Evoque I wouldn't have heard about the Evoque issues...so maybe it goes on elsewhere, maybe it doesn't. What I do know, is that early adoption in every other industry I've experienced has been a troublesome experience. The reality is, that whilst testing of both product and the production line will have been extensive, it is rarely viable to test real life production (in terms of process related to scale) and as such, there is a high risk that things will go wrong.
The things that have caused problems as far as I'm aware are Paint issues (which were due to a natural disaster) and now xenons...I can only assume that Some pretty clever people had done their research and looked at industry trends and averages when predicting how many people would order xenons...and clearly Evoque buyers have bucked previous trends which has caused LR an unexpected headache. This is the kind of thing that happens and can't always be predicted.
Land Rover took a major risk by making the Evoque such a configurable car, this is now biting them...and yet I remain glad that there are so many options and configurations...and most on this forum have historically wanted it to be even more configurable (I.e. Leather topper on the Dynamic).
It may well be that other manufacturers deal with multiple configurations better, but this is new territory for Land Rover, so hardly a surprise that they are being caught out.
The Evoque is not just a new model, it is a new concept and the marketing is different to any car preciously as well...so pretty impossible to predict demand...the thread I started about the competition for the Evoque demonstrates that the Evoque is appealing to all markets except perhaps the luxury saloon and supercar markets...so it is demand cannot be predicted.
Despite this being 'just a car' it is like Apple trying to predict iPad sales...which they got spectacularly wrong by the way.
However, the Dealerships still have a lot To answer for and have no excuses in my book. I continue to put everything else down to genuine early adoption.
Maybe I'm being too kind...but that is not normally my style so it feels unlikely!!