Factory Purchase

What would be better: to order a new car from a dealer or to attempt to order from the factory? If I wanted to buy from the factory, how would I get started?

Since you would get the same car either way, why not just compare prices?

To Get Started, Buy A Dealership
Easier and less expensive than that, have a dealer order a car from the factory for you.

Either case requires a dealer. So the do what you prefer. There is also an interim of locating a model you desire from another dealer lot.

I’m not aware of any US automakers offering factory delivery, except maybe for a Corvette. Some of the European brands, however, will be happy to deliver a car at the factory, with a tour thrown in, if you can afford the trip to Europe. Then, of course, you’d have to ship the car home.

Why do you want do deal direct with the factory? You can special-order any car you want from a dealer.

It used to be your airfare was covered(likely not now) to Europe, but they definitely give you lodging near factory, tour, delivery and let you drive the car around Europe for a period and then arranged the shipment(likely with the rest) back to your locale.

I believe they offer airfare at or near their corporate rates now.

Actually BMW offers that at vehicles sold here in the US. It’s actually an option you buy like buying an automatic.

Get it from the dealer. I don’t think that you can order from the factory directly, but the best reason to get it from a dealer is that you have someone to work with if there are warranty problems. Sure, you can work with any dealer - when the get around to you. The pecking order is: paying customers, warranty work on cars they sold, the other warranty work. The factory can order anything you want, and it should be at the lowest price available if you are willing to take delivery with their next speculative factory order (cars on the lot). There is no holding fee owed to the factory, so you should be able to negotiate that away (dealer hold back).

The deal with tourist delivery used to be that after you drove your car around Europe for a few weeks, you’d be importing your car as a used car instead of a new car and the difference in the import tariff was enough to pay for your vacation. I don’t know if this is still the case, though.

I’ve heard that with the BMW tourist delivery, they actually try to work it out so you can watch them assemble your car if you want to.

Of course, if you’re getting an X5, you get to go to Spartanburg!

Wheee!

VW used to be very big on the tourist delivery program. I wonder if these days if you can pick up your new VW in Mexico City and drive it home? That actually might be fun.

I’ve done both. If you want specific accessories or equipment like I did then order from the factory. If they have what you want on the lot, then buy it off the lot. There is an arguement to me made that you can get a better price on the lot due to the need for the dealer to unload iron that they are paying interest on, but when I have ordered it has usually been just so much over the factory invoice.

Years ago if you lived in Detroit you could go to the manufacturer and order a car for a pretty good discount. They would deliver it to a local Detroit dealer though for initial service. Don’t think they still do that and even if they did, where would you go? Detroit, Ohio, Tennesee, Mexico, Minnesota, Kansas?

Do you mean car broker? I bought mine from one. It’s much cheaper. They still get the car from the dealer but they have special arrangement. You must know what car & equipment you want.