What Can I Do If The Dealers Don"t Have The Car I Want?!
 

I been through 4 different cities to visit 4 dealers.

I am looking for a Blue Protege5 with just the Sports Automatic. I can't find it. Some dealers had very small selections (3 protege5s in the whole lot). Anyhow, I guess the only way I can do this is to have them order it. What's the procedure? Every dealer says something different, some said that I need to put down deposit to order, but what if there's scratches on the delivered unit?

Anyhow, how can this be done? Is it required to put down a deposit. Can we agree on a price before ordering? Anyone have any experience?

You put down your deposit, normally around $200us and then they find the car and delivery it. Remeber the car isn't yours until you sign the dotted line. So if it gets there and is all fucked up you get your deposit back and say you changed your mind. It's very simple as this is what I had to do for my P5. No one had it locally so I talked to the closet dealer who has always been nice to me and very straight forward, put down my deposit on monday and had the car by wednessday evening. Everything was fine, I went over the car with a fine toothcomb and not a thing wrong with it (besides the extra 200 miles on it).

Agree on a price and all that good stuff first. Make sure you got your ducks in a row. Once thats all done then they will ask for a goodfaith deposit so they can find your car. Once they find it and it's deliveried to them you go in do the rest of the paper work after looking over the car sign the dotted line and drive away. One thing I did though was have them put dealer tags on the car and me test drive it before I did anything just to make sure it was ok, it was of course as I knew it would be just wanted to make sure.

Really nothing to worry about.

I was asking the imposible from my dealer here....I wanted TWO identical YELLOW P-5's.....the salesperson looked for two weeks.....and EVERY dealer is on a computer network that they can locate EVERY one that is out there....all they have to do is put in the search criteria that they want...as in the model, color, options...and it will find them.....its an internal Mazda network....my dealer found the two Yellows for me...but they were THREE STATES AWAY...and I could have gotten them...had I wanted to pay for either someone to fly and drive them back...or pay for trucking the over.....I passed on both......it took a little time...but lucky for me...ONE finally showed up at their dealer.....and I gave up on getting a second one...and opted for a Black one for my wife....she liked the black better anyway. :{D

My point is....IF the dealer wants to....they DO have the means to find anything out there.....even if it had not been delivered yet...but is slated to be delivered to a specific dealer.

well we wanted basically all options but the automatic tranny, and that gave them problems finding one in what we wanted (blue) so we ended up settling on a Red with regular alloys, but im very happy, i actually kind of like the alloys better anyway, and the red is beautiful! :D

we told them we wanted it while we were at dinner friday night (over cell phone).... and went and got it the next friday. all worked out great

But we had to requirements from them before we picked it up, that out mechanic (even though it was new with 5miles on it) got to look it all over, we got to test drive it, and it was fully detailed before it left the show room. also if they put on one of them stupid a$$ dealer emblems on the car they lost the sale flat out.... that is my familys rule when buying cars! and they stuck by that and we got a great car.

but i suggest you keep an eye on your dealer, even if they do seem trust worthy you never know what the hell they may do to get you to pay more, or to screw you over.... do your research and STAY INFORMED! dont buy from jerks, and make sure you get treated good.... you are spending a large sum of your hard earned cash on something there, so you dont want to get screwed!

:D :)

There are very few of the "Sport-matic" transmissions around. My dealership had 21 P5's and all but 5 were automatics, and NONE of them were the sport-matic trans.

It will come down (eventually) to how bad you really want it. Special ordering one from the factory, or even getting the dealer to bring one in from another state can be done but you'll pay much more for that car than one you buy off the lot.

We wanted a yellow base car with the 5 speed, but of the 10 or so yellow cars I could find, 8 of them were automatic's and the other two both had the "moon roof" which we definitely didn't want.

We wound up buying a silver car (our second choice) with 5K miles on it, but we got it for $14,649 so we were tickled ;)

Don

Well I had some trouble getting my P5. I just wanted an automatic transmission, abs and side air bags, and for the car to be black. That was it, you'd think it would be easy enough to find, but my dealership didn't have one neither did any dealer around according to him. So, I decided to order one and have it built. Well the dealer told me it would take 8 weeks. 10 weeks later it still wasn't ready and I asked him to do a search again for the car from any local dealers and he finally found one in MA, but with a few more options such as wheel locks, sunroof, and floor mats. I didn't really mind the extra options, the only reason I didn't want them from the beginning was so the car would be cheaper. So, I guess I would say to try and compromise what you want just a little in order not to wait so long unless you're ready to wait a couple months.

After reading this last post I'm a little nervous about my new MP5. I just ordered one a few weeks ago-Yellow, 5 speed, ABS, polished wheels, moonroof, and leather interior.

The leather is a new option that started this month so I had to order it. The dealer told me it would be 8 weeks. I didn't have a problem with this since my lease is up at the same time.

I put down $200 and that was all I needed to do. Hopefully, 8 weeks doesn't turn into 10 or more because I will need to rent a car or buy another MP5 at that time, which would really piss me off after the dealer said it would only be 8 weeks.

My Experience
 

I recently bought my P5 but had to go through a lot of the same things I'm reading here. I absolutely had to have the abs/side air bag option. Didn't mind that the moonroof came with it. It was the safety I cared about. Heaven forbid I would be in an accident, but if I was, I wouldn't want to regret not having side air bags just because of the "forced" moonroof option. Anyway, it also had to be a 5-speed. I asked for any one of three colors: blue, silver, black.

I didn't think it would be hard to find with 6 Mazda dealers locally. Apparently these options in a 5-speed are hard to come by. One dealer said he checked the whole network and none were to be found. He even looked at records of P5's currently enroute on the ships. I found that hard to believe nobody had one on the lot. I did some searching on my own and found one 100 miles away a few days later. Everthing I wanted in the Blue Mica. Well it had the polished wheels but they switched it out for the brushed alloys instead. Keep looking. You might get lucky. Otherwise it's going to be a 10 week wait! Good Luck!!

i just ordered my p5 a few days ago and was told it would be three months max. I was also told that the order comes strait from the factory and not from some other dealership. I guess this is because i got both leather and the sportmatic tranny (along with just about every other option) but who knows.... I am waiting on an insurance settlement so they told me they would hold it for as long as i needed (within reason) for a larger downpayment of $1000.

the P5 are selling like mad..i originaly wanted a red P5 but the only one they had a was a dealers P5 which had 6k kilometers and the sales man would only give me a $1000 discount, so i decided to get the midnight blue, which was my second choise, i got the 5 spd w/moon roof, ABS..etc, to keep the costs down i'm buying the extras myself, like the wind deflector, block heater, AEM air intake, 2G stereo system (couldn't stand the stock stereo)

next mod's for this year will be the B&M short shifter ( next month ), windows tinted (some time in may) and the factory alarm (aug / sept)...then i'm going to save up for a turbo kit if and when one come out for the 2.0 letter pros

Hey Thorman. I don't have a Protege (My GF Does), but when I ordered my car and it wasn't in on time, the dealer let me drive a loaner car for like 5 weeks until it arrived. If your car is not in, don't rent. Tell them you'll go elsewhere and they will work with you.

Good Luck

You guys gotta come up here to Canada, and get your P5. The dealers have like 10-20 P5's in their lot! Its insane!! And thats just the P5's, not counting the sedan's...

well if for some STRANGE reason you want an automatic...I can tell you where there is a dealer with at least 30 sitting on his lot....even a Yellow with custom Leather interior...and a Red one as well. The guy that orders all their cars was getting canned and for some stupid reason they let him put in the last order after he found out he was getting the ax...and he ordered all be 2 of their P-5's with AUTOS!!! ..... they have a bunch of them left.

something tells me its not because of his integrity....or that he was a really hard worker either. :D