I was talking to one of the Honda sales guys while waiting for my Fit airbag to be installed.

He said you can no longer custom order any Honda. The factory produces popular option combinations based on what they think will sell. Your choices are to buy what's on the lot, do a dealer inventory search, or wait to see if a car with the options you like comes up in production.
Is this true or is this BS?

He also said they get very few requests for stick shift cars and rarely have any on the lot. I asked about the Civic Si, back when they were availalbe, he said they only sold 5, mostly to dealer employees.

What irks me is you can't get a high-end Fit with stick shift, only the base model. Same is true for H-RV and I think Civic.

 

Sounds about right....unfortunately those days are pretty much done with automakers...buy what they think we "want" or roll the dice and see if something you do want comes through...that's why I bought our '15 LX CPO, was the only manual I could find, and I figured with the push to autonomous cars and all, this might be the last chance in my lifetime to get a manual on a car I actually want. It is what it is, unfortunately Am not a fan of automatics in general, and have a particular dislike of CVTs....gas mileage be damned

 

You are kinda sorta correct, but not exactly. Honda doesn't allow you to special order option packages. You are always limited to trim levels such as DX,LX, EXL, EXL, touring. These options packages are all equipped the same. Some companies allow you to purchase a car with sunroof and leather but not include fog lamps or something of that nature. Honda just throws it all into the packages. If you want a sunroof you need to get an EX. Want factory fog lamps, you might need to buy and EXL or Touring trim for that particular model. It has been this way with honda for 20 years.

Now to say that you can't order a certain model. No, that is BS. You can order a honda if it is something that is in their order allotment. Lets say that dealer is able to order 20 fits for the year. Some will be pre-designated as LX or EX or EXL. The dealer can choose to order the color and trans version of the car if they want. There will be a wait involved, even more so with the japan build fits. I can't remember if it was an EXL or just an EX, but I know for a fact that I did a new car inspection on a 2017 fit with a 6 speed manual and a smart key. It was a bright yellow car and I think it had leather, but it might have been cloth. Grab a fit sales flyer or go on honda website to build your own. That will tell you more about what you can and can't get than any salesman. I have been at dealerships for more than a decade and can count on 1 hand how many salesmen I have met that truly knew their product line.

2017 Honda Fit | Honda

Just tried the site, you can get an EX fit with 6 speed, but not an EXL or higher.

 

Thanks for the info. I suspect it is just the way this dealer operates: push what they have in stock, to hell with anything else. They used to be honest, but have since gone to the dark side. I imagine if you talk them into ordering something, they will make you pay list price.

Agree packages limit what you can get. I went to the quirky Honda website and if you try to order a stick shift with certain other options a warning pops up and the website freezes, or it forces a CVT on you.

 

I asked our best salesman this morning and he said it is a big hassle to special order and that the wait time from japan for a fit is about 3 months. But he did confirm that it is possible to special order cars within the trim package limitations. So pick your trans, color, and trim....wait 3 months and it will arrive.

 

Thats no special order to me. That's a reserve order. So I couldn't get an EX-L in my color with a manual trans because it is not offered in that trim for the united states.

 

No manual transmission with Nav either. Nav is cool, but not worth $1000 when the maps on your smart phone are better and continuously updated. The Honda Nav disks are expensive and full of errors anyway.

 

I used to work for Chrysler in one of their assembly plants. Everyone operates the same. Well maybe you can special order a Ferrari, Bently or some other high end car with selecting individual options, but then you probably would be on a Fit forum?

It's been an evolutionary process to drive assembly costs down. Yes in the 70's you could pick and choose any option you wanted. Sometimes certain options would cancel others like cruise and manual transmission. Anyway it's expensive to build a car in say 300 configurations not counting colors. Excluding costs, you have a higher chance for error because it's left to the assemblers to read the build configuration correctly and install the correct parts. Then the auto industry went to packages or what they called lane strategy. They put say all the light options in one group that maybe included the under hood lights, trunk lights and interior map and footwell lighting. So instead of 5 light options it was reduced to one. That reduced the amount of possible configurations. Without going to the OEM website and trying to configure the cars, it's now probably down to maybe a dozen or less possible configurations?

When I used to talk to high seniority employees at the plant they would talk about how there used to be bins of parts and the assemblers would pick the parts out as the car came down the line. They would talk about special ordering a base model and walk the line when their car being assembled and get the upgraded radio installed, option wheels and basically get a fully loaded car by the time it came off. Now everything is barcoded, sent to the plant in kits. Only loose parts are bolts, and simple things like plastic push pins.

All that being said, some manufactures like GM allow special order colors for fleet sales and such. What usually happens is that there has to be a minimum. They land up looking sort of goofy. Mirrors, door handles, bumper covers and other minor trim pieces are supplier parts and painted at the supplier. So they might run a dozen pickup trucks in your special order color. but it will probably have black, silver or some other neutral color door handles and supplier parts. I'm not even sure how relevant special order colors are anymore with vinyl wraps?

 

Good input Rob. It's all about efficiency. I toured the Belvidere plant in the late 80's.

In the old days there were also "floor plan" cars that the factory made based on what they had and what they thought would sell. These got shipped to dealers as their "bread and butter" cars. This is what Honda and many other have mostly gone to.

Some dealers had enough money or clout and could order their own inventory instead of having the factory send them cars they think would sell.

Dealers of course would let you order the options you wanted. Sometimes there were called "Sold cars" on the dealer invoice indicating it was special ordered.