Hey guys & gals,

I recently ordered my wife's Mini from our local dealership "Mini of Charleston." Our paperwork & deposit was secured on Saturday Sept. 8th and he advised us yesterday that it had gone into on production Sept. 12th @ 7:12 a.m. Now i've got a couple of questions...

1st - This seems like its almost going too good to be true. From the deposit to the "production date" its going so fast. At what point am I going to realize that there is a breakdown somewhere thats going to take a week or two to stall delivery?

2nd - Our MA advised us that our Mini would most likely be sent to Brunswick, GA and from there come to Charleston. Could this be because he was trying to work us into a earlier departing ship to save a couple days instead of waiting for a ship to arrive in Charleston or is it most likely heading to Charleston? I don't have a port location (haven't been given one; nor a production sheet or whatever its called by the dealership). It just wouldn't make very much sense to me for a Mini to go from Southampton to GA to SC instead of Southampton to final destination (SC).

 

1. No one here can predict anything like that, but if you look through the sections here on people who waited for 2013s or even 2012s, you can get an idea for whether some people just get lucky or if there are delays. Sorry, I'm not going to do that search for you

2. However, I was curious about the latter, so I *did* do this search for you.
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...-post2939.html
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...-post3540.html

(All I did was google "Charleston VDC" and a bunch of NAM links came up )

Maybe this is going to be the "holdup" that you're anticipating. I'd say don't hope for the worst until you know differently. (I'd say easier said than done, too...)

Hope that helps.

Good luck. (I'm waiting also)

 

I appreciate the response er. It must be going to GA first. Its kinda weird but I guess it makes sense in a shipping sort of way. I guess "worst case scenario" is it ships to Brunswick and is transported to Spartanburg then to Charleston. I wasn't looking for predictions on future hold ups...just simply looking for typical hold up spots. I'm just having a hard time waiting. I can barely wait 4 days for a package I order online let alone several weeks for a car I just didn't make any sense to my wife and I why we would settle on a car with most of the stuff we want and pay the same as if we got everything we wanted + a little wait.

 

Well...worst case scenario is more like if it ends up in California by mistake. Or if it shows up not-6MT (assuming you've ordered the 6MT)

Sorry. Just trying to lighten things up a bit.

 

Hahahaha yes that would be awful! Who on earth would want an automatic?

 

Nobody. Let's just assume that anyone who's gotten one is the unfortunate result of a factory error. Wow, BMW makes a lot of errors!

 

There are a couple of hold up areas. Getting scheduled for production, entering production, getting through production, all goes rather quick. The hold up areas are all the transportation points. Once it's built, it has to wait to get shipped to the port. Once at the port, it has to wait for the next ship going to your port of entry. Once it's on the ship, you should have a good idea of how many days until it hits the port. That shouldn't change more than a day or two in either direction, and typically is exactly what the carrier says. Once it hits the port, then again, you'll have to get through the VDC, then wait for a truck to get it to your dealership.

As for your concern about it not being shipped to Charleston, they just may not use that as a port of entry. But if your dealer has said that they come into Georgia, chances are, that's your port of entry for your area. I live in Pittsburgh, and our port of entry is Baltimore. But that's pretty standard, doesn't change, and is outside of your MA's control, so not something they're trying to use to try and get a car here faster.

 

Confirmed on the Toronto on the WWL website !!!!!!!!! Mini Happy dance to commence in 3-2-1 !

 

This. My car started production as scheduled in Week 36, about five days after I ordered it. It took the greater part of a week for it to show up in Bremerhaven and will be there at least until Sunday if not the following Thursday.

After it gets off the boat, there's a (hopefully) quick stop at the VDC. If they're running any campaigns or if they find a QC issue, the VDC stop will be less quick, particularly if they're waiting on parts.

Tell me about it being tough waiting. After my MINI gets on a boat, I have to wait about 3.5 weeks for mine to go through the Panama Canal and back up to Port Hueneme. After it's done at the VDC, there's a 1000 mile truck ride to Colorado.

Patience must be a virtue...it's certainly frustrating enough!

 

Ditto -- I live in Northeast Ohio and even mine is coming to the Baltimore port. There are only a handful of ports in U.S. that they come to -- the rest of the trip is all highways.

 

Tell your dealers you'd rather just show up in Baltimore and pick up your cars. We'll all have dinner beforehand. (Just some lighthearted showing-off that I live in your port city.)

:p

 

I am surprised that Colorado bound cars don't come in on the east coast. I know that Kansas and Oklahoma bound cars do. Five more hours by truck is better than the trip to the canal.

 

You're killin' me! Guess they have to draw the line somewhere...

 

I feel your pain.

 

There is something nice (and dare I say it, elitist?) to have something made to order. You get exactly what you want...not compromising on a car that is “on the lot”…none of that “what can I do to get you in a car today” talk either. The downside is the wait of course, but Rome wasn’t built in a day!

 

I'm really getting into this whole shipping thing now - just checked out the Don Juan's pictures...what a tub. Those roll-on/roll-off ships have to be the most unstable looking watercraft I've ever seen. Looks like they are super top heavy while drawing very little water. Kind of like a barge. In a rolling sea I'd think the whole crew would be nauseous and the cars tossed all around. No wonder they sit in port do long. Must be a lot of scratches and breakage.

 

Deleted

 

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to take a tour of the VDC in Pt Hueneme! Our tour guide told us that Pt Hueneme is used for every BMW with a final destination West of the Mississippi.

Chris

 

Oklahoma, Kansas and Texas are west of the Mississippi and they come in on the east cost.

 

Just repeating what the employee told me at Pt Hueneme!

Chris

 

Maybe he flunked geography

 

Rather than "west of the Mississippi", I'd say it's more like Pacific and Mountain time zones.

 

Well... He even specifically said that the X5's and X3's came on a train from SC to Pt Hueneme, again for distribution to "all points west of the Mississippi."

I'm not trying to argue. I'm just surprised that one of the main supervisors at the Pt Hueneme center would be either so darn wrong or outright lying. He was in charge of specialized tools and the mechanics, so perhaps he's out of touch with the trucking part of the operation.

Sorry to "butt in" if I have misinformation based on that tour. I was trying to be helpful.

Chris

 

Does anyone know when your VIN will start appearing on a ship's cargo? I think that my car will be shipping out in a few days on a WW ship that's currently in dock. Will I only be able to verify if it's in the cargo after it sails, or will it turn up earlier as its paperwork is processed?

Sorry, this may be a question that has already been answered elsewhere, but I can't find it. Thank you for your help.

 

My car has been in the "Scheduled for Production" with no date for about 11 days. :( Hope that's normal.