Four page ad in Wall Street Journal today

[Mike S]

Strange ad. I'm not sure who it was intended for.

[cinquecento]

I presume you mean an ad. for the 500? Can you be a bit more specific by chance?

[Mike S]

Guess I left out the important bit.

It looks like it was for the new Fiat 500. Probably.

[cinquecento]

Guess I'll have to buy the WSG then, huh

Four pages, though, that sounds quite substantial.  Of course, I hope that means we'll see the actual cars soon at the dealers...

[Bert]

I just saw the ad here at work.  Just artwork to spark interest...

Page one text: 'by Passion' with a front view of 500

Page two/three: 'by Intensity' with a side view

Page four: 'by Style' and 'Life is best when driven' with a rear view and the FIAT logo and url

Bert
PE #480

[ciddyguy]

cinquecento wrote

Guess I'll have to buy the WSG then, huh

Four pages, though, that sounds quite substantial.  Of course, I hope that means we'll see the actual cars soon at the dealers...

The car goes into series production on the 13th of this month, the dealers are expected to be open by the end of Feb, the first cars will show up at dealers as early as mid January or so and thus probably won't officially go on sale until March.

That is as far as anyone knows at this time. The 1.4L motors are already in production at the GEMA plant so they'll be ready for installation when the factory goes officially online.

[prima 109]

I'm told that they (Fiat) will not ship any vehicles to dealers until their facillity is up and running.  How many dealers who have to build their showrooms (I'm guessing a lot) are going to accomplsh this by Feb 28th?  I know the local dealer by me most likely will not have his facillity up by then.  Does that mean that my car will A, be shipped to another dealer's lot and I'll have to go there, or B, sit in Mexico until his showroom is finished?  When I spoke with him Thursday morning, he had not heard that he would be needing to call me in to order the car by Dec 31st as stated in our e mails and verbally told by the fiat reps.  I'm cunfused.  the lack of information is killing me and probably many others.
 Craig

[sjmst]

We are all anxious, but I think that Fiat's message is:

1) Prima buyers will be called by 12/31 to finalize their orders
2) We will get the cars no later than 4/30.

We have heard some things that hold out hope for an earlier delivery, but I think the above is the way it is at this point.

[Vlad92]

I have the exact same concerns.   My dealer is clueless at this point (in fact, they asked me to share with them a copy of the terms and conditions we accepted for the Prima which I did.)  They had not seen it before.  It would be nice if Fiat would do something like Nissan is doing with the Leaf.  I have a personalized dashboard that I can log into which shows the status, next steps, and so on.  My other thought was maybe they are planning something better for us... the last email did talk about us hearing "how we plan to deliver the vehicles."  Since there are less than 500 of us maybe we will get individual treatment (VIP type) working directly with Fiat (although I thought I heard somewhere by law you have to go through an authorized dealer as oppose to directly through the manufacture for any car).  Four weeks and counting...  hopefully we will hear something soon!

[Jim McKenzie]

Now I am somewhat confused.

I have seen and heard a lot of conflicting reports on the big question we all have: "What is the exact date I can walk into a showroom and actually buy and drive home a car?"

I've heard December 2010, Jan 2011, and now end of April 2011...but I have also heard first car rolls off the line on 12/17/10.

This seems to indicate that there may be showroom/inventory cars on dealer's floors in January that you can't buy but can look at and perhaps test drive...but you'd be able to configure and order at that time....and that the very first cars (the Prima's) will be built starting 12/17 but not available to the customers for 4 1/2 months (?!?).  That seems far too long a lag, way beyond normal for other cars.

Or...does it mean that there may be cars you can buy and drive home in adavnce of the Primas?   I hope not, I hope the 500 that put down their deposits first get theirs first...but the reports I'm seeing indicate cars for sale in Jan, and Primas delivered at end of April/early May.

I was extremely hopeful of getting a car before 2/21/11...my birthday.  Wonder now if there is a chance?

[Mike S]

I think the Prima's will be delivered first but if that's not true, we can cancel our order for the Prima and buy whatever is available first.

[Fiat500USA]

Well it is normal to stockpile cars at the factory before they are shipped. The thing is that Fiat can't send a car to a dealer that doesn't have training on how to support the car and deliver it.  Some dealers will be ready before others. We'll see what  news comes out this week after the big meeting.