Dodge might not have informed about Challenger SRT Demon cost details or ordering instructions to its dealerships, however that isn’t stopping some of the car manufacturer’s franchisees from taking client deposits on the record-setting muscle car.
Last Friday, Tim Kuniskis, CEO of the brands at Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, stated during interview with Roadshow, that “Technically, nobody should be taking any deposits. They can’t physically take an order, and they shouldn’t be taking any deposits.” That’s because, as Kuniskis says, “we have not offered the dealerships the allotment methodology, the allotment numbers or opened up the order banks yet.”
To put it simply, individual franchisees have no idea how to order Demons, how much to charge, or the number of examples of the limited-edition drag racer their dealers can eagerly anticipate receiving. But, Kuniskis says that hasn’t stopped a few of them from accepting client dollars for a place in line: “Now, ‘should not be’ and ‘aren’t’ is two different things, since I have heard stories of dealers that I’m friends with, dealers that I’ve known for years, that have been taking deposits.”
Accepting early deposits proved to be an issue when Dodge last had a different fiercely expected for performance model on its hands, the Challenger Hellcat. Lots of dealerships took deposits on Hellcat models without understanding the number they would receive, and in the end, some deposit-holders were left empty-handed and angry.
However Kuniskis states Dodge dealerships have learned from those times: “They’re a lot more mindful because of what we went through on Hellcat. Since we had dealers take deposits on Hellcats, they would take 10, 15, 20 deposits, and then they would just ultimately get allocated 5 vehicles. And then they would have disturbed consumers. So they’re being a lot more– or a minimum of it appears– that they’re being far more cautious this time.”
Only 3,000 units of the 840-horsepower Demon are planned for US customers, and an additional 300 units are allocated for Canada. With lots of market watchers anticipating demand to overtake supply on the one-year design, it’s hardly surprising that customers are lining up and dealers are eager to find ways to deal with them.
