Happy news on this Friday... my MINI Cooper is in production!!
All week long, I have been calling the automated hotline (1-866-ASK-MINI) every day (I told you I have obsessive compulsive tendencies, right?) and cheerfully been told my Mr. Automated Cooper Computer voice, that my "vehicles is scheduled for production with no confirmed production date"... yeah, yeah, click.
So, this morning, I pretty spit out my coffee when I heard "Your vehicle is currently in production with an estimated completion date of January 30th, 2006! I had to tell jolly 'ole Mr. Cooper to "repeat".... Woo hoo!
Now while this is great news, my baby still has a long journey ahead. I have been doing some research and my guess is that we are looking more at a mid-March arrival than the initial late Feb/early Mar guess-timate.
So, I pretty much have no chance to make it on the Jan 31st boat, but will keep my fingers crossed that it can high-tail it onto the Feb 5th one. From there, it will take a voyage that I could only dream of... 22-24 days out at sea... talk about a leisurely cruise! I will give you the excruciating details (are those moans I hear?!) on that when we get to that point.
For those of you wondering if it always takes this long to get a MINI, the answer is "it depends." I read one person's experience where they ordered their vehicle on Nov 17th and drove away from the dealership on Dec 22nd - a mere 35 days from start to finish! But they were in NJ, so the sea voyage was much shorter. I have determined it is just a lot of luck. I just missed December production, so that added a month right there (further lengthened by the plant shutdown over the holidays)... and then there are a lot of other variables, i.e., the car being transported to docks in enough time to make it onto the boat.
Finally, thought I would share another e-mail from MINI... a typically snarky gem even with the "opt out" request from their email list:
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