The hell??? That would get my middle finger as I'm walking out. Garbage.
From every dealer I talked to over the past month, the deal is basically the same in all of them. If you are willing to pay to get on the waiting list, you pay, and there is no guarantee of color or trim package, and they set the price and you can go from there, trying to get it cheaper. If you do not want that color or trim, then they work their way down the list to someone that will take the vehicle. The hybrid is very difficult for most dealers to get, and those that they get it are generally spoken for. If a dealer has one or is getting one, and it's not presold, then you can try to purchase it through them.
I got an email today from a dealer around Chicago that I had been working with, they had two grand highlander hybrids that were in their allocation list that just came out, I could have purchased either of them, but we never talked price. Dealers in larger cities are getting more hybrids, and in larger numbers, if you want to purchase one of those, you need to be talking to dealers in Chicago, St. Louis and elsewhere that sells a lot of vehicles.
Each Toyota dealer gets a new allocation sheet on the 1st and 15th of each month, it tells them the vehicles they are getting, make, model, trim, color. If you want a specific trim or color they can trade with another dealer if one has what that dealer wants from their allocation sheet, but it's up to the dealer.
