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Awesome.

smfgt10

I really feel for you guys, I went through something similar last year with my 10, I ordered it in April.. months of delays with no VIN, no explanation cars got pulled back, blah blah and I didnt end up getting mine until September.. Ive been holding off on ordering the 11 because Im holding out for the Yellow Blaze.. but at this point am glad I havent ordered.

Now just to throw in my 2 cents.. I work in a car factory, have worked in them for 15 years now, its not Ford so I cant say 100% how they handle their holds/quality issues.. But in our plant depending on what the issue is.. they will NEVER let a defective/damaged unit out.. Especially if it is something that can affect the safety of the vehicle.. Ive actually seen them pull a car back in that was completely finished with the window sticker in it and all.. because one of the floor panels was mis-aligned on one side by 2mm -- And they scrapped it. The explanation was the safety of the vehicle was comprimised because that mis-alignment would have affected weld locations which could possibly cause a catastrophic failure in an accident..

Usually with a parts shortage, depending on the part obviously, IF they can still build them and add in the missing part later down the line or in an offline repair area they will. Or even in some cases they can finish the car completely and it sits out on the lot till the replacement parts come in. Which can be a while depending on the part and who it comes from.. IE if its a parts manufacturer that makes parts for several different car companies.. they have to get another batch worked into the schedule, and most parts are ordered well ahead of the build schedule. It can vary hugely depending obviously on what the part is, and where it is coming from , what the problem is.. etc. etc. etc. They will pull parts ahead if they can .. But it would have to be something pretty generic to the entire model line that doesnt change much, And lots of the more specific parts are even bar coded and have serial numbers matched to the VIN of the car they go to..

And if they are setup anything like ours is, the reason most of the customer service people cant tell you anything is they dont have a clue other than what their computer screen will tell them..And it wont give them details because the factories / distribution / sales & dealerships / are all seperate entities.
Like our plant is a customer of the plant that builds the engines, then the next branch is a customer of our plant, then the dealers are a customer to them ..
To REALLY find out what the problem is without waiting forever for some kind of press release, and I dont see that happening until it gets to the point where they feel they HAVE to say something, the only way you could find out what is REALLY going on is to talk to someone working in there in the factory building them.

Which is what really blew my mind when I went through the hell of getting my 10-- The CS people and even some of the sales people at the dealership who didnt know me well enough, would just pull **** out of thin air that made no sense at all.. But I can see they havent improved how they handle the situation at all.. it was the exact same situation for me .. Why dont I have a VIN yet? why is my car on hold? and their answers.. lol ohhh how it drove me nuts that they would think I would believe them..

About the only way I think this will come out of what is REALLY going on is someone high up at the Factory would have to authorize or pass along the information with the blessings for the management regime.. But most of the time, they will just pass along that its a quality issue/safety issue/ parts shortage issue.. until well after the fact. I still to this day dont know what happened or why my 10 took soooo long, other than it was a quality hold and they stopped shipping them until the problem was corrected.. But in the end it was worth the wait.. lol plus by the time I got my car the incentives had changed and improved my deal on the car quite a bit..

smfgt10

Oh and one other thing.. if they arent 100% sure which cars are affected.. they will pull back entire build lots to inspect and double check each one.. and depending on how many people they have available to do this.. because they are gonna have to pull some people from the line obviously.. it can take weeks to go through them all...

wannabe

Good post.

Now somebody here HAS to have a brother-in-law who has a cousin whose wife works with somebody whose husband's golf partner's neighbor works on the Mustang line. THAT guy will know the story.

montreal ponies

Where in the world is Carmen SanDiego !