My understanding is that dealers will be announced shortly and then begin contacting customers in their area who already have a $99 deposit. Presumably this will occur during Sept - Dec time frame, and at this time the actual hard orders will be submitted to the factory. With most car companies, the date the order gets into the system puts it in the factory que, I assume Smart will be no different. Early orders will be the first to be built - those indeed will show up in the first quarter 08. Since there must be a production limit, latter orders will wait in line and be built into the second and third quarters and beyond.
The big variable I suspect will be at the dealership end. Assuming this reservation list the dealer gets is chronological (those who reserved first on top), the correct thing to do is to go down the list and contact the earlier people first to confirm their intentions. But here's where things may get dicey- what if mega dealer A gets his list weeks before the little dealer Z, who only just got awarded his dealership, then dealer A may already have orders in the factory que, long before dealer Z.
And just how many people will the dealer contact at once. Maybe he'll only contact 20/week? ...50?
And another thing to ponder - allocations.
Will mega metro dealer A get 500 units allotted to his dealership, while rural dealer Z get only 100? Then consider dealer A is allowed to place 50 orders/month, while dealer Z only 10/month. This is exactly what happened during the launch of the PT cruiser. Some small dealerships got screwed over the allocations. You could have ordered months before your internet friend, but he gets his two months before you!
Of course this could also work to ones advantage. If dealer Z is in an area where not many people had heard of Smart, maybe there's only 50 names on his list and everyone gets a car early! Its a crapshoot I tell ya!
So what will Smart do?
Today
Linear Mode
