I made a deal on my first Vett (2008 3LT w/several options). I used a local Chevrolet dealership which is one of the largest in my area and does appear to have a good stock of Vetts.

It has been three weeks and the order still has not been placed. I was told yesterday that they should get an allocation on Monday or Tuesday of this comming week and then they would be able to submit my order.

Does a dealership get their allotments on a certain day of the week?

 

Allocation is pretty simple..You have to sell vettes to get vettes....High volume corvette dealers get more allocation....Small chevy dealers might be lucky to get 1 or 2 vettes allocated to them a year.....Ask a lot of questions, and don't take any BS. I ordered my 07 LBM in March from a local dealer. They never told me about allocation. Three weeks went by and there was no change in my order....Thank god for Ken's page on here.....There are a lot of horror stories out there. They kept telling me that the order status would change, and that vettes can take 3-4 months to get built. I cancelled my order and went down the line to a larger dealer that sells more vettes. They were up front and honest with me...On May 2nd my baby came in......Stay on them......They just want the sale and they will lie to keep you.....

 

My search netted this info when I was wondering the same thing. My dealer was wondering how I knew so much.

 

Point of clarification, Papa08: allocations are announced on Thursdays. If your dealer gets one, they will immediately push the buttons that will assign your order to that allocation. The following Tuesday or Wednesday, your status code should change to 2500. Once you hit 2500, you should get your TPW within another week or so, with production to follow in another 3 - 4 weeks. If for any reason your dealer doesn't get allocation on Thursday, your clock will not begin to tick and there's no way to tell when it will.

 

Yep. Happened to me.

Jerked me around for two months.

Went with a forum dealer in the end.

People can check status for you here to if you ask.

I would demand that a date be given that the order should be accepted and clearly be going into production, and check the status here.

I am sure there are up front dealers.

I had dealers tell me up front, they had no allocation left, so honest dealers are out there. Finding one with allocation AND would accept my GMID discount was the problem. So had a great experience with a forum dealer. Stupid easy it was.

 

IF DEALER IS LARGE AND GETS 10 ALLOCATIONS A WEEK AND THEIR ARE CONSTRAINTS LIKE 180 UNITS THIS WEEK AND HE GETS NONE OF THE ALLOCATE UNITS HE STILL CANNOT PLACE ORDER. HE CAN BUT IT GETTING PICKED UP IS SMALL. MOST DEALERS WILL NOT ORDER A CAR THAT HAS A CONSTRAINT UNLESS HE HAS ALLOCATION. THIS IS BECAUSE THEY WOULD WASTE A UNIT THAT COULD BE BUILT AND SHIPPED.
z51vett

 

To give you an idea of how fast things can go, I placed order 26 July, no constraint items, currently 3400 with a build week of 8/20. Never hesitate to ask a dealer about their allocation situation.

 

I've just been through this nightmare and my dealer had serious issues with telling the simple truth...why is that so often the case with car dealers???

Ken Fichtner helped me sort it all out. Every Chevy dealer gets a report called a "Final Allocation by Week" report. It positively shows whether or not they have an allocation for Vettes. Ask for it and your dealer will likely "s**t". Mine sure did. Also be sure to get your actual order number so you can check with Ken and keep your dealer honest.

My understanding is that each month, generally during the last week of the month a dealer gets an 'estimated shipment report' for the next consensus period, which is a month long. Consensus appears to be a process where a dealer has an allocation in a given week during the month and agrees to place an order against that allocation. After consensus is reached, GM will finalize production for the following month. Your dealer will also "s**t" if you ask for this report! Regardless, if they refuse to give you a copy, cancel your order and shop elsewhere!

In my particular case my dealer finally responded to my requests since I knew exactly what to ask for. Seven weeks later my order got placed and the car is scheduled to be built the week of 9/3. I've got my fingers, toes, arms & legs crossed. Good luck!

 

This is very interesting and I appreciate the comments. I have learned a lot since ordering a 2008 Corvette. I have always ordered cars - as opposed to buying from dealer inventory. It has often worked well and quickly - including a couple of Mercedes from Germany in just six weeks. My slowest delivery was on a Ford F-150. I ordered the vehicle in April 1996 - just after a sleek new model of the truck had been introduced. Delivery was eventually made in September of the same year. My problem with that order was that I wanted a base truck with a manual transmission - and Ford wanted to sell top of the line trucks with automatics. So I learned. I think those were "constranints".

My local Chevrolet dealer sells a lot of Chevrolets. But the sales are completely dominated by trucks and SUVs. There are few cars sold and very few Corvettes per year.

I prefer to spend money locally and want to be able to make clear to the service department that I bought the vehicle HERE. I was willing to wait but I did not understand "allocation".

So eventually I got an "order status" and a "target production week". That is fine and I am not complaining. Had I gone to a Corvette Forum dealer I believe I would have gotten a much, much quicker production of my ordered car. However, I was willing to wait in order to give my local Chevrolet dealer the benefit of the sale (to help his "allocation" in following years) and to be able, maybe, to have some leverage with the service department.

I am not suggesting that anyone who opts to use a Corvette Forum dealer is wrong. I am willing to accept and deal with the slow and imprecise process of ordering a Corvette from a local dealer which certainly does not know as much or is able as the Corvette Forum dealers.

However I do think GM is totally incompetent and deceptive in this matter - as well as many others. There is no excuse for failing to satisfy any dealer with a "sold" order immediately - whether it is a rural dealer who mostly sells trucks or one of the huge volume Corvette Forum dealer.

"Selling" Corvettes seems to matter. Dealers who specialize in and do a great job of producing orders get preference. However the cars are all sold at a big discount - EVS, Kerbeck or the guy who sells mostly trucks in Kansas. Local dealers also sell at a big discount, but do not want to do so since they only have a very few "allocations" yearly. Your local dealer does not want to give up the big profit on the walk-in who sees that pretty Corvette roadster on the showroom floor amongst a bunch of Aveos and Tahoes. It is likely that you can easily make a better deal with a Corvette Forum dealer, but on a locally ordered car your price should be similarily discounted - with a much longer wait.

Anyway, but for buying a very high demand Toyota manufactured in Japan (like a RAV-4), I know of no other purchase and order process more bizarre and customer unfriendly than what GM has devised for Corvette - a car they still have to sell at a discount despite all the customer roadblocks built into the GM system.

I do not understand GM.

 

 

Fortunately my dealer was up front about his allocations. He knew what allocations he had and told me when my order would be placed. Everything was like clockwork from there.

 

You have to go back a few years to understand the situation. The current allocation system is a reward to dealers who at the end of the C4 run would order Vettes. In the last years of the C4, Vettes were not selling well and GM promised dealers allocations of the new C5 if they would continue to order C4's. The current big dealers did order many C4's and discounted them heavily just to move them and ensure that they would get the new C5 that they could sell for big profits.

Now, over 10 years later the reward is still being given for this which makes no sense at all. Vettes have sold well all the way through the C5 and now C6 generations. It's time for GM to stop the silly allocation process and let any dealer order sold Vettes as needed.

 

some small dealers , and even some very large ones like one near me, get only a few vettes a year and make their money selling trucks and little junk cars. So, when they get a vette it's marked up 5 or 10 or ( as locally ) even $15K over list and put on display in the showroom. They use it as a prop to help sell bubba his pick em up truuuuuuuuk.

Then, there is always the chance that some moron will walk in and pay $10k over msrp for a fairly ordinary base C6.

 

thanks this code list will come in handy

 

Colored toothpicks .....................

 

Good explanation ... I was wondering why GM would portion out the car's availability when in reality it's close to being over-produced and they should be thankful for every sale from every dealer they can get.

 

I don't have the patience. I will just go to Kerbeck, the Toys-R-Us of vettes, and pick out the one I want. I mean c'mon there must be 40 units in stock at all times.....Corvette Heaven

 

well that should make things clear!

 

I think the allocation system can work to your advantage as well. I typically order cars through a local car broker. A lot depends on the model, supply and demand and whether he can find what I want or whether the vehicle has to be ordered.

Many times he has found what I wanted at a dealership in another city or even in another state. Some dealerships have been willing to discount heavily just to move the unit in order to protect their future allocations.

 

Thanks for the detailed answer; I did not know about the C4 to C5 transition issue that was so well explained. And I agree that it is time to end the allocation process and for GM to sell immediately to any Chevrolet dealer that has a "sold" order for a car that is not really in too much demand and which is well discounted to a buyer who will take the time to do some homework.