Sportsmobile West business news - Page 4

Charliesmom · 09-07-2020, 04:29 PM

I suspect you are still in their queue. If your van was sourced by SMB West, you”ll be one of the lucky ones. You should email your sales person and get an answer. We picked up our van in March, 2020. I have an appointment for some warranty work with them the end of this month. If you believe their public statements, warranty issues with SMB West builds will be honored going forward.

Scott
2019 Transit 350 HR 3.5 Eco, Quigley 4x4 “Vandemic”

DisabledExplorers · 09-08-2020, 12:14 AM

I had a 2009 Van and now have a 2019 Poptop Transit and I count Jonathan, Alan & Liz as friends and have NO DOUBT they will take care of any previous customer of theirs with no issue forever going forward.

pjtpj · 09-08-2020, 08:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thedee29

All, I'm looking for some opinions. I've got a 2020 Transit AWD build in the pipeline at SMB west but the van has still not been built by Ford yet. It was due in production in early April at Ford. At this point would you continue with the SMB West build or wait until next June. I haven't talked to them yet so have no idea what warranty work going forward past 2021 looks like. In other words, are there negatives with sticking with my original SMB build. Thanks

A 2020 Transit with a Ford production date of April 2020 should have been built by now. There were early delays due to lack of parts, fleet production in favor of builds with lots of options, and a COVID-19 production shutdown, but that seems to be past now. All the Transits that we ordered during more challenging times, even the ones with early scheduling delays due to missing parts availability have been delivered. Transits that we order now are getting scheduled for production quickly. 94% of our builds are AWD. The only weird thing left is that the "order bank" for the Transit 2020 model year has been extended way beyond the normal model year cut-off time.

carringb · 09-08-2020, 09:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pjtpj

A 2020 Transit with a Ford production date of April 2020 should have been built by now.

Matt Ford posted that vans with the power sliding door option still have not entered production, so if this van in question has that option, it's production date is still TBD and Ford might be cancelling those as 2020s. Apparently they aren't even rolling those order over automatically. The ordering dealer has to re-enter it as a new 2021 order.

pjtpj · 09-08-2020, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carringb

Matt Ford posted that vans with the power sliding door option still have not entered production, so if this van in question has that option, it's production date is still TBD and Ford might be cancelling those as 2020s. Apparently they aren't even rolling those order over automatically. The ordering dealer has to re-enter it as a new 2021 order.

Agreed. If you have a 2020 Transit on order with power sliding door and you want it any time soon you'll have to have that changed.

Thedee29 · 09-08-2020, 03:28 PM

Well that’s the problem. I’m disabled and will be putting in a passenger side door lift. The factory power sliding door is a big deal since the aftermarket options are not great. This is my second Sportsmobile so I’m not new to the process. I am disappointed that I had to learn about this from the forum rather than my sales guy at SMB west, but glad that I got the info here! Thanks Dee

pjtpj · 09-08-2020, 03:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thedee29

Well that’s the problem. I’m disabled and will be putting in a passenger side door lift. The factory power sliding door is a big deal since the aftermarket options are not great. This is my second Sportsmobile so I’m not new to the process. I am disappointed that I had to learn about this from the forum rather than my sales guy at SMB west, but glad that I got the info here! Thanks Dee

Aftermarket options look OK to me. Here is one example thread: https://www.fordtransitusaforum.com/...ng-doors.3538/

rumrunner73 · 09-08-2020, 04:43 PM

Dee, this info hit right before labor day weekend and in talking with my contact info was was only known for 24 hours before my original post . Im sure If you have an order on the books, conversions will be started quickly. I appreciate SMB West using IG to put out important info for its followers , Its an efficient updated way to communicate with a tight community SMBw helped create.

pjtpj · 09-08-2020, 05:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rumrunner73

Dee, this info hit right before labor day weekend and in talking with my contact info was was only known for 24 hours before my original post . Im sure If you have an order on the books, conversions will be started quickly. I appreciate SMB West using IG to put out important info for its followers , Its an efficient updated way to communicate with a tight community SMBw helped create.

Some of us have known about delay causing options for the 2020 Transit, including the power slider, since last November. There were other options that were causing orders to be delayed, but, other than the 2.0L diesel (which also probably isn't coming in 2020), power slider door and maybe some other unusual options we don't see much, those were all resolved about 2 months ago. When you place a factory order, there is a special hold status for delayed parts availability. Early this year, probably due to really complicated scheduling due to large numbers of delayed parts, some orders were getting delayed without this special status, but others with the same options were and it seemed pretty obvious why those chassis weren't getting scheduled within the usual window. This is the time that we started communicating to our customers that were waiting on chassis with high probability delay causing options to let them know what was happening and giving them choices. In some cases, we proactively ordered 2 versions of each chassis, with and without the suspect option.

I don't read these forums daily, but if anybody has a specific Transit ordering question, they are welcome to PM. Between my company and those in my close network, we special order a lot of Transits. We are very proactive about getting those vehicles to our customers, so we tend to know what is happen at the factory, in plant scheduling, etc..

rumrunner73 · 09-08-2020, 07:50 PM

I guess I was confused about your comments. since this thread was created with the purpose to inform members of the news that SMBwest will possibly no longer be affiliated Sportsmobile and will star new in 2021 under a new platform. Sry but I don't see the relation to your issues in this thread . Maybe start a new thread under another question, I do realize the threads can get off topic easily but I think this thread is not the right place.