delivery system like smart car

[beckaloulou]

I just read the post about driving a smart car and I was just curious (read : avoiding doing work) so I went to the smart car website and I saw something VERY interesting there is a place that if you have a smart car on a wait list you can sign in with a number I am guessing you get from your dealership and you can track it like a UPS package...I obviously cant get in to see (on wait list here since MAy 3rd should get it by end of this month!!!!!!! ) exactly what it looks like but I think it is very interesting that the smart car people can do that and we cant!!! I know I have seen conversations on this board about wanting to be able to track your car maybe if we bring this up to our respective dealerships! Any way just thought it was interesting

Becky

[jelloslug]

Most car companies have some kind of tracking system on cars that you order (but nothing that cool). The biggest problems with the Prius is that no dealers are actually letting people order them, they are just taking what they can get.

[David Beale]

We were tracking Prius a few years ago, I think with the help of a person who worked in a dealership.

[DropDeadRed]

Hi Folks,

First week in my new Prius here (2008 touring, got it for MSRP!). But prior to moving to the USA, I had a 2005 Smart ForTwo in Canada. One of the first smarts in the country actually.

The smart production system is all about building cars specific to customer orders. Back in 2004, it wasnt really web trackable other than the shipping portion (VIN trackable while on the boat) but the salesperson could check your order. Once your order was assigned a production interval (10 day windows) you could pretty much track it right until delivery. Until that allocation, which was less than a month before production, there was no info. Folks were waiting 4-5 months at least to get allocation.

I ended up taking a car other than the one I was waiting for in a convaluted exchange that involved a panel swap (you can swap the plastic panels between smart cars fairly easily.. under an hour with a pit-crew like team at UK smart meets) because some woman was dying for a car that looks like the attached picture but she didnt have a place in line so they sold her a dearler test drive car that had my desired color panels on it and sold me the trailer queen photo car with under 100km on it but lots of trailer time. Turned out to be a borderline lemon law car (my fiancee called it a "lime").

Aanyways.. as I said Smart's production system seems geared for producing to order whereas Toyota's systems in my experience are more about producing masses of cars in proportions that match what seems to be selling well then once they are en-route to market, make some kind of effort to allocate to matching orders. My understanding is that no end-client specific orders actually show up at the factory... I might be wrong!

That would be why you basically put in your order and there is no info until all of a sudden its a call from the sales guy saying your car is on a boat a week from landing stateside.

I can't complain, my wait was only about 45 days which was actually about 10 days early because I wasn't in the country myself yet. My dealer/sales guy was able to get things together for me remotely and fend off the circling sharks of the other sales people who wanted to sell my car to various buyers who were there!

DDR

This is NOT me in the photo but the car was mine but with blue panels on it!

[Sheepdog]

cute!