I'll be stopping by the dealer, buying my lotto ticket so to say. Will take a fancy car up to Village Ford and tell them I want one if they can get one and get on a list if they have one. DBK, do you think it would be easier to get one in Europe?
Hard to judge at this point, but I believe it's a possibility given the price of the car and the overall market in Europe.
I'd suggest for best odds you put a deposit down at as many dealers as will take them from you. 3500 US dealers. < 1000 cars. 2 out of 3 dealers will not get a single car. Most, if not all GT's, will be going to US based dealers from what I have heard. I do not think any dealer will get more than one car. I have a deposit down at a dealer that is of significant size and history with ford that I'm 99% sure will get one. I had a good connection there and will be the only deposit they take for the car. I don't know how long it will be until the dealers hear if they will or will not get allocation. If I had to guess maybe 6 to 9 months. If they plan on shipping end of 2016 they will need to take orders and get the builds started no more than 9 to 12 months from today. I think the GT is going to be a prized car for any collection. It looks incredible and will be a blast to drive on the street or track.
A large quantity of new GT production will be sold outside of the U.S. Significantly more than last time overall, but the car is also being sold outside North America and Europe this time. There will definitely be U.S dealers that get more than one car. Dealers have been expressly warned not to take "orders" or make promises on allocations. Deposits at this point represent an interest free loan to the dealer on a car they will likely never get.
I've heard some different info than this from my Ford contacts regarding how many US cars vs non US bound cars. I guess we will see. True, dealers have been told not to take orders or make promises. Mine has followed these marching orders. I'm going in with full knowledge that there is a chance they may not receive one and they have been clear with me that until Ford gives allocation no promises are made. Well one promise is made which is IF they do get one it is mine I guess. I gave my interest free loan to them as I'm getting zero interest on cash in the bank so it's a wash there Most dealers will not get one single car. As I said more than 2 out of 3 won't. Also I'll stick to my info that no dealer will see more than one car. If this happens though it will be an edge case with maybe a dealer or twom but again I doubt it still. Will MY dealer get one is all that matters to me though. They are one of the largest volume Ford dealers in the world with a kicker of having some very rich history and deep roots to Ford reaching back to the first days of the company. This is why my confidence is at 99% but I won't be 100% until allocations are made. I wish us both luck as well as anyone else seeking to buy this car! We will all need it
No reason to put a deposit down because the majority of cars that will be available to normal customers will just go to whoever bids the most. The demand is far outstripping supply. If the dealership owner doesn't want it and none of his friends do, I doubt they are just going to go down a list of first come, first serve with deposits at MSRP. There will most likely be people waiting with checks for $25K, $50K, $100K over list... and probably even more. Bring your exotic to the dealership when you stop by to put your name on the list and they'll know you're somewhat serious about wanting one. Letting them know you're a serious buyer is probably the most you'll be able to do. The dealership I went to was definitely selling the GTs 10 years ago, so there is a chance they'll get one. It's pretty much right down the street from the headquarters, so surely they've been around a while and have good relationships with Ford. I'll enquire with any family members or friends if they know any executives or higher-ups that would have a better chance of getting one, but probably don't want one.
I'll also call a few dealerships in Europe. Will probably be living there next year, so I'd gladly take a European one as well, though I'd rather have a US model since it's much easier to get a US car into Europe than a EU car into the US.
Village did deliver a number of VIP allocations on 05/06 but the main guy that used to handle them is now over at Jack Demmer. He's done a lot of cars for the Ford family and did Sammy Hagar and Kid Rock's GTs. They had Nick Scheele's Red GT sitting in that little circular entry for an eternity. I don't even think he ever took delivery of it. I believe that the executive allocation process on this car is going to be severely restricted. My guess is it will be at a minimum Group VP and above, more likely EVP, and probably a small number of people that actually work on the program. It will also surely have at a dead minimum a 36 month period restricting transfer of ownership to anyone not named on the offer sheet. It was 36 months on GT350R, so it may well be 60 months on FGT.
Yeah, haha, I remember that red GT being in the showroom forever. Guess I'll stop by Demmer too and call it a day. If I don't get one, oh well, wasn't meant to be.
Question: if Ford is a publicly held corporation (and it is) and there is tremendous demand for a product it makes (and there will be), then why aren't the stockholders demanding that the company build every car they can sell? Why won't they make 30,000 new Ford Gts?
There is not much money in it and would be capital intensive to create a facility to handle such volume. The facility also probably wouldn't be of much use after unless they kept turning out such cars. The time and money is better spent elsewhere. Remember, exotic cars don't generate much profit. Ferrari sells 7000 very high-end cars and earns about $350M/year. However, a decent chunk of that also comes from merchandise and things unrelated to actual car sales. With annual car sales of 2.5M and profits in the billions dependent on those 2.5M cars, it's much more important to invest in those.
Chances are, because of the bespoke assembly and cutting-edge tech, they will not make much money, if any, at the current pricepoint. IMHO. But we won't know for certain for a while. Of course, the marketing, and what is learned in the process (design; racing) to later be integrated into mass production has great value. Edit - Also to add some context - there is literally no way for Ford to mass produce this right now - they don't have the facilities, and creating them will take time. BMW is just-now starting this kind of production with he i8...and they started quite some time ago. Still a much different car, but maybe the closest in CFRP tech. They make 20 i8's a day roughly.
I understand your point, and it well may be the answer, but it also seems that the longer they build the GT, and therefore the more they manufacture, the greater the amortization of the R & D costs, tooling costs, production line expenses, etc.
I see your point. But I think perhaps, and obviously I'm speculating, it is so specialized at multimatic, and the production capacity so limited, that the tooling costs over time are noise to a company like Ford in terms of cost. But only they could tell us that : ) I'm all for Ford selling supercars to jerks off the street like me ; ) I hope it happens, but I'd like to see it at the 911-fighter price range of ~150k or so.
Me too, but the GT is leagues beyond the 911. I think their Shelby will have the measure of all but the fastest 911s-at least in raw speed around the track. We don't expect Porsche to give their supercars away(918), why should Ford?
It's priced appropriately or under priced IMHO. Just saying if they mass produce something, i'd prefer to see it in a different price segment. Shelby GT350R is a cool car. I'll be interested to see some reviews, final weight, etc.
I don't think the price is unrealistic. I just wish they made enough for people to actually buy them; you know, people who aren't named Everenham, Lauren, Hendrick, etc. Keep the production run open as long as there are customers!
I agree. Hopefully they will consider an additional year of production, or perhaps increase production over time if it makes sense to them.
They are going to produce the car for a number of years, but they will not be able to build more than 250 annually. I think they will end up struggling to meet that, the same way ramp up to 9 units a day on 05/06 took months to achieve. In the beginning, I remember them only building 2-3 cars daily. Still, it will be 1,000+ units. Granted, MM has a lot of experience with this type of program and they have a lot more flexibility, but small hiccups can make for big delays. The car is not RTM, so the production process by nature takes a long time and incremental unit cost doesn't get driven down like it would on a less hand-built car. Once they have everything in place and production is rolling, MM will ultimately complete 1 car per day.
Even if they spent the money to increase capacity, it would go to waste unless they continued making similar cars even after the GT. They'd have to introduce a mid-engine exotic into their regular line-up for it to make sense. I'm not sure I see this happening any time soon.
Thought this was pretty fun. Regular Londoners have no idea what the car is [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7l31zfOykE[/ame]
