When will first Enclaves show up?

I'll let you all know more when I know more.

We are waiting for resolution on the 19" chrome wheel availability issue. My salesman made it sound like placing the order was a done deal once that is resolved. He did tell me to expect a longer delivery time on the Enclave, 10-12 weeks rather than the 6-8 on the Acadia. Maybe this is a sign that the order won't be entered for awhile. I never thought of that possibility.

I am ordering a Cocoa/Cashmere CXL AWD. I am getting every option except DVD, navigation, and rear cargo net/shade. Sticker is something like $41615 and I am getting it for invoice due to the fact that it is a factory order. They would not have cut me the same deal on one from inventory. The invoice matched up quite well with Edmunds, but all dealers in the Minneapolis area do have the regional advertising fee shown on the invoice. This amounts to a little over $700, so the net effect is Edmunds+$700.

The 12 weeks is because of the Enclave Backlog. There are 6K outstanding orders, which must be filled to get cars out to dealers. Custom orders will be fit in as time permits, but no longer than 12 weeks. This allows the factory to manage production.

You get a better deal now, on custom orders, because your order does not stand against the dealer allocation. The dealers will be holding thier allocated vehicles for full MSRP, as they get a limited number until production ramps up, and the pipe fills. Custom orders stand against the dealer volume for the sales kickback, but do not affect thier delivery of allocated vehicles, so they will take these orders at any price above invoice (to make free money). They know there is no guarantee you will come back to thier dealership and buy an allocated vehicle. The dealer vehicles are usually fully loaded, as they make the most off these.

Placed an order for ours today - Gold Mist, Cashmere, CLX, AWD, 7 passenger, Navigation, Driver Confidence pkg, Luxury pkg, Sunroof, 7 spokers, Towing pkg. Price was "invoice"(includes $424 "Advert/Adjustments" charge and $735 destination charge) plus $500 plus $20 "Customer Dialogue Network" charge. I showed the salesman(from whom we had previously bought 2 new vehicles and knew socially before that) the comments in this thread about custom orders and their effect on dealer allocation, etc. - it didn't seem to make much of an impression on him. He said that invoice plus $500 was the price they gave their best customers, and he could give us that.

We're in north Idaho, and the apparent glitch in the dealer ordering program regarding the "Chrome Package"(consists of the 7 spoke chrome wheels and sunroof) hung us up as well - since we ordered the components of the package but weren't in the targeted states of CA, FL, or TX, the program didn't seem to know what to do with us. All of the apparent logical manipulations we could think of to get around it didn't work, so we had to leave the order incomplete until the salesman could talk to somebody on Monday.

We struggled with the color choice. We live on a gravel road, so our cars seem to be perpetually dirty. Hence we have chosen Pewter and Silver Birch on the two previous vehicles as they hide dirt better. The either very dark or very light colors show the dirt more. The two tone paint pattern on the Enclave creates some difficulty in this regard. We're not especially crazy about the more contrasty combinations, but those that aren't this way are either the darker or lighter colors or were of delayed availability( my wife will have to rent a car by the month until the Enclave arrives). We settled on the Gold Mist, even though it uses the dark accent on the lower body, and will likely get the integrated assist steps as they will keep some of the dirt off of this area. Our color choice was also influenced by our strong preference of the Cashmere interior over the other choices. My prediction is that solid color paint choices will become available on future model years, as I don't think we're alone on our ambivalence about the two tone treatment.

Sorry for the length - thought I'd share our purchase/order experience.