Question over dealership orders?

Can somone please explain to me how the various dealerships work. I placed an order for my evoque back in July with my local dealer and was told that my car wouldn't be available till end of April with delivery beginning of march.
Several weeks later my wife went north to stay with her parents during the school holidays, and on the weekend I drove up too. Curious to see if the local dealer up north had a pre product car, my father in law drove me to his local dealership(he has a RRS). they didn't unfortunately, but when I enquire about ordering he said he still had a December slot with delivery in the first week of Jan. He showed me his order book with the available space also.
My question is, isn't ordering a car done on a first come, first serve basis(as my Audi was) or is it down to a postcode dealership location lottery?

Craig,

Each dealership is issued with a finite number of build slots for each name plate, usually three months in advance. With this in mind, we know what we can order until January, however no further forward. With Evoque, dealers are using their existing monthly allocation as a guide for Jan, Feb, Mar and onwards. The allocations are based on the size of the dealership and the demographic of the area that they cover. For instance, we are in London so are allocated very few Defenders compare to the average dealer, but far more Range Rover Sport proportionally.

With this in mind, dealers are taking orders from customers and they will then be ordered with the factory in the order that they were ordered (if that makes sense), i.e. first customers first.

Dealers offering December build slots must have had a cancellation which they hope they can convert to your required spec as December allocation was ordered some time ago. Either that or the Sales Exec is not quite in tune with how many orders the dealership has.

If it helps, then based on my calculations of what we are expecting to be allocated for Q1/Q2 2012, then we are now suggesting Summer 2012 for orders taken from now on.

I hope this helps as an explanation?

James

James, with regards to ed4 orders, if the furthest you can 'see' is January, does that mean dealers don't what there allocations will be for this model?

What date can ed4 orders actually be placed within the system to be able to obtain a build slot?

thxs for the help James. So a little bit of both then, as if 2 dealerships have equal number of orders(lests say 50 each), but differnet allocation numbers(dealership 1 had 50 allocations per quarter, dealership 2, 25), delivery times will be different for each individual, ie first person from dealership 1 would expect delivery in 1st quarter, 2nd person from dealership 2 in 2nd quarter.
Helps explain how some people who ordered a year ago are having such different delivery times. To some extent down to the car spec, but maybe also down to which dealership ordered from and the number of allocations that dealership has received. In my case, my local had been allocated 52 cars and the dealership up north had 78

Craig nobody "ordered" a car before 21st March 2011 because the order book wasn't opened until then, what they did do was pay a deposit on an unknown product and then their dealer should have contacted them with the final specs for each model a couple of weeks beforehand. I "ordered" my Evoque in 2009 with no spec by putting down a deposit, the actual order was confirmed with the dealership on 21st march and ordered that day which is why I was able to take delivery on the first day of sales. If people put a deposit down and then didn't take up the option to order on 21st because they wanted to see a car and see the various specs on the 8th September then they left it too late to get an early car unless they were happy to have whatever the dealer had in stock.

(30-09-2011 03:47pm)XFullFatTim Wrote:  Craig nobody "ordered" a car before 21st March 2011 because the order book wasn't opened until then, what they did do was pay a deposit on an unknown product and then their dealer should have contacted them with the final specs for each model a couple of weeks beforehand. I "ordered" my Evoque in 2009 with no spec by putting down a deposit, the actual order was confirmed with the dealership on 21st march and ordered that day which is why I was able to take delivery on the first day of sales. If people put a deposit down and then didn't take up the option to order on 21st because they wanted to see a car and see the various specs on the 8th September then they left it too late to get an early car unless they were happy to have whatever the dealer had in stock.

I only put a deposit on mine late June and got mine on the 8th of Sep. Many dealers had 1-2-3 pre specced cars - I got a black 5 dr dynamic sd4 auto, but was offered various lbasic prestige 5drs, some petrol coupes also offered loads of cars with lux packs.