A pure guess. Some dealers no longer want to deal with special orders and customers calling and upset when cars don't come till well after the date they thought. So those dealers are simply ordering their allotment just like they have for years - based on a mix of what they know most sells etc for their area.
i think there is some truth in what you say but with caveats. Dealerships want to sell cars. They don’t enjoy the extended wait times and customer anxiety that comes with it. They also don’t want to turn customers away by the “take or leave what’s on our lot” approach. That is bad branding for reputation. Dealerships are in between a rock a hard place. They don’t have inventory on hand or readily available in the pipe. Many dealerships may be waiting for the coming financial windfall when production stabilizes and orders can be delivered.
but there’s a disturbance in the force.
This is for KIA but, as we all know, KIA and Hyundai are, for all intents and purposes, the same company. Reported on Red Flag Deals forum. As of the beginning of May 2022, Kia has stopped taking "sold orders", so you can't order a specific car for a specific person. They did this because the back-order time was taking too long, and they wanted to concentrate on the cars that were already ordered. (Actual sold order placed before May are not cancelled). So if someone places an order today, it basically stays on the shelf until Kia re-opens the sold-order system. It is well documented that KIA and Hyundai are cumulatively a million vehicles back ordered at present.
The VFOS order system is mostly out the window at the moment due to shortages. VFOS is where dealerships can, once a month, order a set number from a manufacturer supplied list of available vehicles with combination restrictions. You can’t order all of one kind but you can order less than the maximum.
Then there is “allocation” where the manufacturers send random vehicles to dealerships. “Here…you are getting 1 Tuscon SEL”. Those aren’t “sold orders” and some dealerships would rather bolt on add-ons for higher profit than offer them at MSRP as alternate choices to those on the waiting list at factory prices. 1 on the hook and 1 in the net = better fishing for the dealership.
So this may shed a sliver of light of truth on the rumours of cancellations we’ve been hearing. A dealership may not have been informed that Hyundai was no longer taking sold orders for a specific vehicle or an eager salesperson did the deal regardless and now had to track back. It’s only one partial bit of a possible explanation. I don’t see a dealership canceling any order as that is akin to turning down business. The only explanation, imho, is that the factory has told the dealership that orders have to be cut because they are bridging too many upcoming model years or the vehicle is in for an upcoming redesign and the factory wants a more accurate order picture based on customers seeing the new design.
Who knows? Rumours and conjecture is all we got and I, more than most, know less than most.
It’s now officially 6 months since I placed my preorder and I still don’t know a thing about it.
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