My dealer sent me this email:

Your mustang has a VIN. The last communication from the factory stated "subject to plant" which is the stage that they have picked it up for production.
Also scheduling is set for 6/11/07 which looks like the ETA will be right on as I had predicted.

What is subject to plant? What is scheduling? Does 6/11/07 mean the day it will be delivered or start to be built? We ordered it on April 20 and he told us 8-12 weeks, so 6/11/07 would be a little sooner than predicted.

I just want to know when my car will arrive! Can anyone shed new light on this? Thanks!

 

Scheduled to be BUILT on 6/11/07. ETA is estimated time of arrival AT THE DEALERSHIP. Where are you in the US? In the mid-Atlantic the cars are on the dealers' lots inside of one week.

 

 

Well it will tell you both the production and estimated delivery date, so you would have to ask the salesperson which date he is giving you. Most Mustangs have been showing up in less then 7 weeks lately.

 

Generally speaking the ship date will be within a day or so of the build date. If you ordered any VPC installed options it could add a couple more days. To Houston I would imagine you'd be right around a week in transit. My car was 5 weeks order to delivery!

 

Your dealer interpreted the terminology wrong. His Status Report (which is where he's getting all this information) actually says SUB TO PLANT which stands for Submitted To Plant, not "subject to plant". That simply means he placed the order and, since he had allocation available, the order was "pulled". (or, like he said, "they have picked it up for production."

The date he gave you, 6/11/07, is the WEEK it's supposed to be built, not the DAY. (although, simply by coincidence, it could be built on that Monday, the 11th) Worse case (assuming there's not some unforseen hold-up) your car would be built on the 16th.

As for the ETA, initially the system automatically sets the ETA at 2 weeks after the build week. Once the car is built, the ETA will be updated and become more acurate. There's really no way to know yet exactly when your car will arrive, but a good guess would be sometime during the week of 6/25.

One thing to note, if you ordered your car on 4/2, it looks like he put a lot of orders in front of yours. If you were first on his list, you would have gotten a VIN on 4/6 and been assigned a build week on 4/9. (EDIT: I didn't take into account when Job 1 ( ) is for the '08's, so maybe he already had several "sold" orders in the system which would explain why you're having to wait an extra month)

 

The next updates will go like this:

SCHEDULED: They've assigned an actual build date. No way to find out what it is unitl after the car's built though.
BUCKED: All parts are available & in place to build your car.
PRODUCED: It's been built.
RELEASED FROM PLANT: It's left the factory and is sitting in a parking lot waiting to be picked up.
CONVOY: The car hauler has picked up the car to be taken to the rail yard to be loaded on a train.
Rail Car Number: On my status reports it simply lists the actual number of the rail car it's assigned to.
CONVOY: Yes, this one is on the list twice. Once it comes off the train, it has to be put on another car hauler to get from your local / regional rail yard to the dealer.
DELIVERED TO DEALER: Obvious, but you should should have your car by then.

BTW, sometimes the Status Report is several days behind.