GTI Build Dates - Anyone got one yet?

[monkeyhanger]

Something for everyone to remember - the August shutdown. VW production will be closed for 2 or 3 weeks sometime at the end of July or first few weeks of August (weeks 31 and 32 I suspect) and we should see a gap in actual build dates as a result. Orders treated the same way for same spec placed a day apart could end up getting built a few weeks apart.

You can't get away from an annual shutdown in a high volume production environment. Lots of annual maintenance jobs (complete cleandown of paint shop booths and preventative maintenance on robots, air handling units for airtooling etc) get done along with planned line and building modifications that can't be squeezed in on a wekend (assuming they don't work them on CSPs anyway).

I used to work for a structural steelwork contractor at the Ford Transit van plant in Southampton - you'd be surprised how many changes get made to line and buildings all the time as a result of optimisations etc.

[monkeyhanger]

My dealer has just emailed me with the usual 2 week update. He has said mine is week 26 (same as VW UK said yesterday) but my dad's will be 2 or 3 weeks after (3 or 4 weeks later than VW UK said yesterday). Maybe it's to do with the "build date" window of a few weeks and maybe mine is at the front of a window and my dad's is at the back of it, or maybe there's just a big (4 week) margin of error between any 2 different VW UK representatives.

[JoeGTI]

Mine is now "awaiting shipment" 

Anyone know how long it typically takes to go from that point to actually arriving at the dealers?

The dealer told me it's missed the boat for this week. I would imagine there's a boat at least once a week?

[Gryzor]

Provisional week 38 here...complete joke!

[monkeyhanger]

JoeGTI: From Germany to UK port is a 1 or 2 days, from port to dealership should be anywhere between 1 and 3 days (my dealership is about 8 miles from the Port of Tyne where it will be shipped to, so hopefully a day for me).

No idea whether yours goes straight to Ireland by ship (likely) or whether it gets shipped to the UK, transported across to a western port and then ferried to Ireland. If it goes straight to Ireland from Germany then maybe there is only one ship a week.

There used to be an excellent VW boat tracker on Scirocco Central forum and RW1 could track anything from there, but he died recently and no-one else has taken up his mantle. If you know the name of the boat and what port it would be coming to/leaving from there are websites to check the progress of ships. A few old boys from down the street use the website as I live above the mouth of the Tyne and they all do "boat spotting" with their high end camera gear as they sail by our street.

[JoeGTI]

JoeGTI: From Germany to UK port is a 1 or 2 days, from port to dealership should be anywhere between 1 and 3 days (my dealership is about 8 miles from the Port of Tyne where it will be shipped to, so hopefully a day for me).

No idea whether yours goes straight to Ireland by ship (likely) or whether it gets shipped to the UK, transported across to a western port and then ferried to Ireland. If it goes straight to Ireland from Germany then maybe there is only one ship a week.

There used to be an excellent VW boat tracker on Scirocco Central forum and RW1 could track anything from there, but he died recently and no-one else has taken up his mantle. If you know the name of the boat and what port it would be coming to/leaving from there are websites to check the progress of ships. A few old boys from down the street use the website as I live above the mouth of the Tyne and they all do "boat spotting" with their high end camera gear as they sail by our street.

Thanks mate, yeah I remember looking at that thread on the Scirocco Central forum when I was waiting for my GTD! Wow, that guy died, oh my god, that's awful... he really knew his stuff on the shipping.

To the best of my knowledge, the cars are shipped directly to Ireland - to either Dublin or Cork as far as I know. I suppose it's just a question then of how often an Ireland-bound ship departs Germany... ? Once it's in Dublin, I'd expect it to be in the dealers by the following day.

[Sootchucker]

Yeah Chris (RW1) died quite recently and suddenly. A big shock for all of us, and the forum is worse off for his departure. He had an amazing wealth of knowledge and was ready to help anyone. A sad time for all us Rocco owners.

[JoeGTI]

OK, so my dealer just confirmed that my car missed the recent boat departing for Ireland and there isn't another one scheduled for a couple of weeks. He's not expecting to see it arrive until the 13th/14th of June. How slow are these bloody boats, it would nearly swim it in that time!

The delay kinda suits me in a way, as I was hoping not to register it anyway until July 1st (our registrations change to a "new" plate in July for the 2nd half of the calendar year).

[Torch]

My Golf GTi was ordered on 30th April.
VW UK have confirmed a manufacture date of 26th August at the latest but are optimistic of bringing that forward.
Live in hope for September 1st.

[monkeyhanger]

One thing I can glean from my week 26 build date, the "no GTDs are being made before August" line appears to be bollocks and it would appear that if there is any VW sanctioned delay on GTD production compared to GTI then it is a matter of a few weeks (is week 24 still the earliest GTI order conformation for UK mainland orders?).