First of all congratulations to ViperSmith for selling two high technology companies in 18 months. I'll bet that he, more than most of us, understands that it is not appropriate to be totally transparent in all corporate internal discussions. (even though everyone would like them to be)
Maybe the answers have been right in front of us along.
Ralph mentioned he wanted to put VCA members closer to the front of the line. He also planned to make some initial cars for approved dealerships to have in their showrooms and available for test drives and touchy feely at the dealerships.
If Dodge dealerships were offering free test rides to the general public, there would be a line out the door and around the block, filled with every teen age kid with a liscense, along with their dad.
I had a talk with Ralph at Willow Springs and he mentioned they were getting really tough with suppliers to achieve the expectations of Team Viper as per quality. Said some of them were taking longer that he had hoped to get up to speed at the quality they would accept. Knowing this would cause frustration for those wanting immediate deliver, most of us feel that getting the quality control is perhaps even more important than getting them out the door.
It has also been posted by Herb and others that it was taking a bit longer than expected to get Federal Regulators to pass on EPA, CAFE and other manditory items. They had cars waiting in the finished good section, waiting for government approval to go out the door.
I would also suspect that not all the parts for every option were available at the beginning of production. If a customer had ordered special wheels, colors, seats or carbon fiber pieces, it is understandable that those cars would be shuttled further back in the production sequence, but those items that were readily available would be completed first.
I understand that in order to make initial production as efficient as possible the first batches were runs of identical cars, with idential equipment, and pre selected to make sure each package had complete parts availability. They were of all the same color, stripes, wheels, interiors etc.
Once these tranches of cars were turned out, it was probably more capable to build customers cars with more diversity.
No matter what the reality was, getting a personally ordered Viper has always required "the wait". Kind of like a kid waiting for Christmas to come, and hoping Santa would not forget him.
Now that there are literally thousands of different combinations possible with all the options, the wait can seem overly long indeed.
Do not loose faith. Those SRT guys and girls are working their butts off, getting the cars down the line. They take great care, and all the ones I have had the good fortune to meet, are infused with the realization that each and every car will be delivered to a real live person, and that each car will be a treasured item by it's new owner. Nobody is holding anything back to make the wait any longer than it must be.
Early reports from the newest owners is that this new car is perhaps the greatest improvement for any new Generation. They are smoother, faster, better handling, more comfortable, smarter, and more precisely constructed than any Viper that has gone before.
I have a friend that just rec'd his Tesla that he had ordered 18 months ago. He had the same frustration as they had cars like he had ordered in their showrooms, but his was still being built. They had a computerized tracking system, but it did not correspond to reality, and he was checking his computer 10 times a day to attempt to determine the precise delivery day it would arrive. By the time he had gotten his first drive, on the way home, all that frustration had gone away, and he was in complete delight with his purchase decision. Hoping your experience turns out to be much the same.
And Paul is correct, forum anxiety does ****, but when people are getting the wall of silence, what is one to expect?
True Story...
