Mercedes is hot hot hot right now, but we are building a car. It will take 2 months and we are getting 6% off.

Yup you'll get the same discount(s) on ordered cars. Factory ordering is fairly simple, pretty much all the automakers except the Japanese do this as a routine part of business, and certain ones (like BMW) this is almost entirely how they operate. I've never done it for Jag/LR but the last couple of trucks I've bought have both been custom orders and the good dealerships know how to make this easy and painless.

It's pretty easy to do a nationwide search and find out if another dealer has it on their lot. You might not have to wait as long as a custom order might take. A buddy recently had a rare color/feature combo shipped from California to a Virginia dealer and still got a great price.

You'll get a discount. If not, go to the next dealer. You're ordering a car. They love that -- no carrying costs. The car shows up and they have a buyer waiting. If you really hunt around, you may be able to get as low as invoice price.

if there are competing dealers you may get a discount. Basically you've already guaranteed that one of the cars that they are allotted is a sale without them having to use and floor financing on it. BMW used to heavily pitch this

We were looking at a couple cars at jaguar and Range Rover, and there was a beautiful one onsite that DH wanted. It was a rare paint color/hub cap combo that we really liked. We dallied, and didn't get around to buying the car, and now it's gone..... doubtful they'll get another like it in 6 months.

We'd already asked the salesman and he said he's generally only able to take $500-$1000 off these brands, because the car market is currently on fire, there's no inventory because of covid, and these brands don't typically have much need to discount. We were at peace with paying the sticker price.

So question is - if we go back in and say "build us that exact car again" - I appreciate it could take ages with covid. And that we presumably wouldn't get the $500 discount we might have if we'd bought the floor model.

But is there another financial downside to ordering a made-to-order luxury car? Do they charge you extra? Anything else I should know?