MK 8.5 Order

[Exonian]

Excellent!  Looking forward to seeing the car.
What are your initial impressions? (I’m asking for Joe! 😁)

[WelshGolf]

Excellent!  Looking forward to seeing the car.
What are your initial impressions? (I’m asking for Joe! 😁)

In the 1 mile trip home (lol) there is something definitely more premium about it that I can’t put my finger on why. It’s not a major leap forward, just a nice step. Maybe it’s the bigger/better infotainment and the slight tweaks around the car.

I was concerned it was going to feel exactly the same as the 8, so wasn’t that excited about picking it up but there are quite a few tiny differences that make it a noticeable step up.

Was also concerned how big the screen was and if it would look silly and get in the way, but it’s actually totally fine and fits in nicely.

Very happy with the new wheel choice, the Warmenau, in person they look so much better, very premium looking I feel.

Only negative on the new looks in the front bumper, now the radar/safety sensors are down the bumper it spoils the clean look for me.

[JoeGTI]

Excellent!  Looking forward to seeing the car.
What are your initial impressions? (I’m asking for Joe! 😁)

 

[Colh]

Got a call back from the dealer.  They’re saying it’s got a build week in December now, so not likely to get it until Feb.  At which point, may as well wait until the new plates in March.

All for a stock GTI with only black paint as an option

[Carlosfandango]

Got a call back from the dealer.  They’re saying it’s got a build week in December now, so not likely to get it until Feb.  At which point, may as well wait until the new plates in March.

All for a stock GTI with only black paint as an option

Could be worse I guess, it should arrive at the dealer around four weeks after build.

[WelshGolf]

Got a call back from the dealer.  They’re saying it’s got a build week in December now, so not likely to get it until Feb.  At which point, may as well wait until the new plates in March.

All for a stock GTI with only black paint as an option

Luck of the draw it seems, my order was 3 weeks before you and is here, but looks like yours will take a couple of months more to arrive

[sipj]

None of the delivery times make sense.  I know spec changes things, but that doesn't seem to apply here where people have cars with good spec before others with standard spec.  There is all this negative press about VW at present and closing factories, but surely that will only make things worse.  They can build cars in a day all with automated robots, but they cannot sort out proper lead times for people ordering.  If VW could say you will have your car in 2 months from order, I would imagine there would be a load more orders.

I mean, I have no knowledge of how car manufacturing works, but surely they can make the order and delivery process much more reliable.

[fredgroves]

I mean, I have no knowledge of how car manufacturing works, but surely they can make the order and delivery process much more reliable.

Car manufacturing works like most production line manufacturing... they plan production of a batch (or item in the case of a car) based on the availability of the parts needed. That might be on hand parts (ie sitting on a shelf at the factory) or it might be when expected deliveries will arrive ("just in time" manufacturing whereby planned need for a part is ordered for delivery by a supplier - and in cars nearly every part is made by a third party not the car maker who simply assembles sub components!)

So manufacturing slots are available and into these slots the production planner has to place customer orders based SOLELY on the ability for all of the parts to be available on that particular day/week.

And that is why your order will bounce around for some time until its production status is "planned" - which is normally for VW locked in 2 weeks before the actual production takes place.

Hopefully you can see that for your order there are hundreds of seperate items probably coming from hundreds of different suppliers that all have to arrive at a precise time for your order to be fulfilled.... and this happens for 2.3 MILLION customer orders in 2023....

Just because your order needs the same part as 200 other golfs needing to be built, your order might not be assigned the parts that 199 others have, so you get knocked back a build week...

Is this complex? Yes absolutely.

Is this effecient? Well yes it is to a large degree, its certainly more financially effecient than say having a vast warehouse full of parts and doing stock orders when minimum inventory levels are reached.

Where it can of course come unstuck is when suppliers to VW have a hiccup (a Russian missile through their roof or a cargo ship stuck sideways in the Suez Canal) and amplified by hundreds of times due to the diverse sourcing of car components.

Does that help answer your question?

[SRGTD]

@fredgroves; good post and a nice summary . I would add that the number of build slots allocated by VW to a dealer could also have a bearing on when a car is built.

I don’t know if VW’s process for allocating build slots is still the same as it was a few years back, but historically, VW made a quarterly(?) build slot allocation to dealers for specific models. I may be wrong but I seem to remember that certain factors such as size of a dealer / dealership group and number of vehicle orders they place have a bearing on the number of build slots VW allocate to them. If a dealer accepts more customer orders than they have allocated build slots for in any given calendar quarter, then those excess orders can’t be submitted to the factory in that quarter - instead, the dealer needs to carry them over to the next quarter (or subsequent quarters) when they get their next build slot allocation from VW.

[Colh]

I understand there’s lots of moving parts to getting a car built.  But this was a car already slated for build by VW, and the dealer was picking one from a bunch that should in theory have then been prioritised for build as there was a customer waiting on it.

Now if VW say it’s all a bit too complex for me to understand, and my order could be anything from 1-6 months then I’d tell them to stick it before placing an order.  But 12 weeks was a worst case when ordering. I was assured it would be quicker as it normally is.  So I took my chance and ordered expecting to get it November at some point and definitely this side of Xmas. 

Currently mulling it over, but erring on the side of cancelling and sticking with the MK8 for a bit longer or trying to get a stock car from a dealer that already has one if there is such a thing.