I apologize if I seem daft but I'm new here. I havent gotten my MCS yes but I was just curious what it all meant. A crash course in this forum if you will.

 

When you order your MINI, your salesman (or MA - Motoring Advisor) gives you a time slot (a production week) for when your vehicle goes to production in the factory. PW 1 is the first week of the year; we're in week 33 now.

gl

 

That's a good question and believe me, we've all wondered the same thing at some point.

Mini schedules its production cycles by the week of the year. The first week is week one and the last is week 52. I think my car was built in weeks 10 and 11, if I remember correctly.

Get out the calendar and count the weeks until you find the week your car is set for production. What typically happens is that someone whose car is being produced in a specified week will create a thread devoted to that week. It gives all the other new owners whose cars are being produced that week a place to hang out and swap information and console each other about the wait.

Usually, most people will bleed into two different threads, as production typically starts one week and ends the next.

Good luck on your wait.

 

thanks very much I can't wait to get my car. Any suggestions for things I should do once I get it?

 

How about take a road trip to the West Coast and deliver some barbecue to the people who offered you suggestions.

 

i don't know that the bbq would quite make it there. or much past the first 10 miles hahaha

 

Maybe you'd still have some sauce, though. Is Charlotte home of vinegar sauce, or the mustard ones?

 

vinegar you ever been out to the east cost?

 

The production week support groups are based on the week your Mini is scheduled to be completed, not when it starts production. As greylight has indicated the current week is week 33 so if your Mini was due to be completed this week you would be in week 33. If your Mini started production this week you would probably be in week 34 unless your Mini started on Sunday in which case it might be completed by this Saturday which would still put in in week 33.

Yes, it can be confusing, especially up until your Mini starts production. At that point there is generally a group of people pulling together to provide support for the week.

I'd suggest reading through some of the slightly older support group threads as you have the opportunity. You'll learn a lot from reading them. Those of us that have gone through the process already have probably already asked and answered all of the questions you may have. Being from the week 26 group, I would of course recommend reading through it .

I read through the previous 2 or 3 weeks support group threads and asked questions of those folks as they had recently gone through the process. Some weeks support groups are more active than others, I'd like to think we had an active group. The more active they are, the more likely you are to find answers to questions, even questions you may not have thought of yet.

Good Luck!

 

Oops! My bad. Thanks for the clarification.

gl

 

What kind of question is this?

It's a car.

 

Not to the Carolinas. It sounds like barbecue paradise. Sadly, people on the West Coast think they know what barbecue is, but what we do mostly is grill. Most don't know the difference.

 

Gary,

That's interesting. I hadn't heard that before. During my production experience, it seemed that most of us began on the start week thread and then drifted into the following week's.

 

Thats sad to hear. Well the only solution is to drive out here and get some Real BBQ. At least thats what I think.

 

I might have to plan a Dragon run to get the best of both worlds, sometime.

 

what i wanna know is who picks the production week.

i ordered my car on saturday Aug. 11th and my MA said i got fit into week 34. i seen some people that ordered like in July and are fit into week 36.

 

My MA said it's based on how many cars that dealership has allotted to them at the moment. For instance, any "regular" dealership for, say, Honda, has a list that says they are getting in 10 vehicles that week, whereas another dealership may only have 2 allotted to them that week. In MINI world, that means, dealership 1 has 10 cars that can go in hypothetical production week 1, whereas dealership 2 has 2 cars that go in HPW1 and the rest of their orders get pushed to HPW2+.

I could have misinterpreted what she told me, but it makes sense to my crazy head.

 

That sounds pretty accurate. Said another way, if my dealer has 10 slots for this month and has already used them, a new order won't get in the queue until next month. But if the same dealer has used all of this month's slots and already has 10 people on the waiting list for next month, then it will be October before my order gets to the factory.

I assume that large dealerships in major markets get far more slots than those in small markets such as Portland. Even though Chicago and Los Angeles have several dealers within a rather small geographic area, I'm sure they sell tons more cars and draw from a larger population base than those that may draw customers from several states that have fewer people.

 

That seems to be the general consensus anyway. I first started posting in the week 25 thread and it was quickly pointed out that since my Mini started production in week 25, I was actually a week 26 person. I have heard it both ways but the majority leans towards it being based on the week it is finished.

It does help to keep the support threads in order by doing it this way, everyone is posting in the thread are then at a similar status in production instead of half starting production and half finished.

 

Our group must have been more tolerant. Or no one else knew how to figure it out, either, and we just went with the flow. The one advantage to half-new, half-been-there was that the people who somewhat knew what was going on could inform the new ones, vs. everyone learning at the same time.

Guess it's whatever everyone at the time makes of it.

 

What can sometimes happen is that a dealer may already have a car "in the pipeline" to be delivered to them as a "spec" model (i.e., not a customer-ordered car). If the basic features you want are pretty close to the features of the spec car, they can change that spec car to match your order, and that puts you that much closer to the front of the line.

The best possible example would be if the dealer had already ordered a car that was almost identical to what you want, and that car is just about ready to enter production, but hasn't yet reached the deadline for making changes. Then the dealer can request the last-minute changes to make the car match your order, and your car goes into production almost immediately.

 

And in that example, it wouldn't matter whether the spec car was almost identical to the customer's wants or not. The entire spec could be changed as long as the car hadn't entered production and the ability to make changes cutoff. That's my understanding of the process, anyway.

 

That's entirely possible, but I thought the "cutoff date" for some options/features was later than others. For instance, I don't know if the dealer can change a spec Cooper hardtop with an automatic tranny to a convertible 'S' with a six-speed at the very last second, whereas they may be able to change a paint colour or a trim package right up until the car enters production.

 

I see what you're saying and you may be right, there, because you are really going from one model to another, rather than switching up some of the features of the same model.

Your question is a good one.