"At Consumer Reports' event, a smart USA spokesman said orders for the vehicle are outpacing availability in the U.S. "We have over 30,000 people who are still on a waiting list to purchase a smart fortwo," said Ken Kettenbeil, director of communications for the company. Kettenbeil said the first fortwo sale in the U.S. occurred in January and that approximately 20,000 vehicles have been sold since then."
My guess: One or two of them made the error at one point. Then, it propagates due to follow-up reporters having read it 'somewhere', and being too lazy to do their own research, incorporate the bad info into their stories.
Just sloppy research, or lack of. Some probably use Google for their research ... so you can see how the misinformation would spread.
It would be interesting to see how many of the 30000 become orphan.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rfernatt
Nov 10
"At Consumer Reports' event, a smart USA spokesman said orders for the vehicle are outpacing availability in the U.S. "We have over 30,000 people who are still on a waiting list to purchase a smart fortwo," said Ken Kettenbeil, director of communications for the company. Kettenbeil said the first fortwo sale in the U.S. occurred in January and that approximately 20,000 vehicles have been sold since then."
Where are the 09s? It seems there is a delivery or other problem. Mine was due on the 11th, still not at the dealer? I have read there are late deliveries of the 09s all across the U.S..
I found the answer on another thread, it appears a EPA sticker is missing. Dread the thought that a car that passes all the requirements to come to the land of the Big PX would be allowed on our roads without another sticker. Some inspector at the port probably got a bonus for finding this major issue with so many new cars.
seems to be about right to me and shouldn't be to anyones surprise.
they hope to deliver 30K smarts next year and have a waiting list of 30K. with the current wait anywhere from 6-18 months, depending on your location, looks like they're RIGHT ON TARGET.
not too concerned about that now, as MY smart will be here by April!!!
It would be interesting to see how many of the 30000 become orphan.
keep in mind that most of those who buy orphans ARE on the waiting list too, so they're still technically being sold to one of the 30K waiting customers...
On page 4, Roger Penske anticipates about 30% to be orphaned and says they have 58,000 reservations - this was a conference call with wall street about 3Q earnings.
"Well I think, to really be open here, we have the ability to probably access up to 34,000 vehicles next year, which will be 6,000 or 7,000 more than we had this year. But as far this planning purposes, when I look at our reservations, we have 58,000 reservations today. We’ll probably deliver about 6,000 or 7,000. I think we delivered our 20,000th vehicle in the last couple of days. We’ll deliver another 5,000 or 6,000. And you take that out of the mix, and we get approximately a 30% loss on reservations at least in this current environment."
You might be right. But here is how i look at it. I am on the orphan list and on the reservation. someone configured and decided not to take the reserved smart. So I will go in and take the orphan. Since I am only going to get one smart, i will cancel my reservation(or i will keep and configure but not taking it). In this case, 1 less reservation(waiting) or one more orphan.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MENSA42
keep in mind that most of those who buy orphans ARE on the waiting list too, so they're still technically being sold to one of the 30K waiting customers...
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