Quote:
Originally Posted by Yobyot
I think I've discovered why I got 15% off MSRP on my MY19 M40i. And it's not due to my negotiating skills.
Suppose you're a BMW dealer and you want upcoming model year cars to be more competitive in your market. You might triage allocation slots by letting them go into production in the near future against selling them to a customer. Worst case, you configure the build with what you expect to sell long before it goes 150, take the car into inventory and pay floor plan on it.
Best case, you get someone like me before it's too late to change the build who wants a custom build. You can save on floor plan and book the sale months earlier. That might help with future allocation and also makes the month it was sold in better than it would have otherwise been.
That's one possible explanation for what we see here. My car was ordered by the dealer on July 4 -- two weeks before I bought it on July 22. This squares with my surprise on that Sunday, when I was shopping by phone, this dealer responded to my spreadsheet build with a vehicle inquiry report that was already 112. Other dealers had input the build I asked for bids on, but none were at 112. See the attached image, which is what the salesperson gave me today when I asked for confirmation of a week 33 build. The dealer let this allocation go to 112 three days before I bought it.
What this means is that the dealers have more information about supply and demand than we do. (Surprise!) And they'll use it anyway they can. In this case, to minimize finance charges for a vehicle, make their monthly BMW-assigned quota (note the "quota" field on the report) and/or get an incremental sale from a custom build.
It can also explain why I (and the woman who likes to play games) got such "great" deals while other dealers, who might be happier to take inventory onto their books, aren't offering as much discount.
My takeaway from this: ask the dealer to input the build, give you the output and if it's 112, bargain harder than ever.
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I think you might be reading too much into it but I can only theorize as well. I do know that allocations were released to dealers on 7/6 and the slots were for production starting at the end of July into August. Any status changes before 7/6 would be something that happened during the allocation rollout.
Most dealers will use all of their allocations on a hot seller like the X3, so it's not like they are sitting on them. The dealer probably had already put in all his allocations and just converted one to your specs and changed it to priority 1 / customer sold. They would certainly be motivated to give a deal on an order since it costs them less than putting the car into inventory, and I can't think of any other reasons it would be different this time. That's how things worked when I ordered a Z4 many years ago.
I put my M40i order in on 7/10 and was the first 2019 order the dealership put in. The vehicle was 112 right away -- guy mentioned that it was assigned a production number when he sent me the inquiry report with my specs before I even gave him the go ahead (we were still talking price and trade-in value at that point). From that I am concluding that any allocation would go to 112 whether it's for a customer or not. The only difference I have heard is that priority 1 orders may get sorted up ahead in the queue.
Last year when I ordered a 4-series coupe, the order went to 111 because the dealer had no allocations for that model. And he wasn't going to be able to get an allocation for weeks. I was about to back out, but he offered me an insane deal so he wouldn't lose the sale. Being in 111 seemed like it gave me more of an advantage than if it had been 112. I had to wait an extra 3 weeks longer than I hoped, but the extra discount made it worth my while.
Bottom line, I don't know how it's working with 2019 X3 orders right now, but based on my experience and what others have reported, it seems normal for these orders to go into 112 right away if there is an allocation. Those of us who got orders in soon after 7/6 seem to have been queued into week 31 (completion) with production getting starting in the past few days (week 30).