mattlqx
Driver
- Thread starter
- #1
Traded this Deep Impact Blue for a Grabber Blue '17 on 7/18/16! http://www.mustang6g.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1395593&postcount=104
I picked up my car on NYE after a mind-torturing wait. My wait was far less than what some of the guys with earlier builds have or even still are experiencing, but still for people with instant gratification complexes ordering this car will play on your psyche. My car is G1343, Tech package.
Timeline
8/28 Order & Confirmation
11/12 VIN
12/4 Sticker
12/8 Blend
12/9 Produced
12/10 Released
12/12 Shipped via Rail
- 12/14 Battle Creek, MI
- 12/15 Hammond, IN
- 12/17 Riverdale, IL
- 12/18 Toluca, IL
- 12/19 Kansas City, KS
- 12/20 Olethe, KS - Waynoka, KS - Shattuck, OK
- 12/21 Friona, TX
- 12/22 Grants, NM - Winslow, AZ - Bellemont, AZ - Ash Fork, AZ
- 12/23 El Mirage, AZ
12/23 Arrived at Rail Yard
12/24 Unloaded
12/30 Received at Dealer via Truck
12/31 Pickup
Ordering
After my local dealers turned out to either be inventory-hoarders or out of allocations already in July, I turned to rapidly reloading the forum till my finger hurt. As luck would have it, I ran into one of [MENTION=16199]shelby_r[/MENTION]’s threads about an MSRP deal out of Florida. I thankfully was first post and he messaged me the contact info. I left a voicemail immediately and then called the dealership, Autonation Ford Del Ray, early in the morning (I was 3 hours behind here in AZ) to follow up. Alan was quick to return my call once he arrived at the office and the whole ordering step only took a few back and forths with deposit information, which by the way he stressed was fully refundable. I got a print out of the confirmation the same day.
I went on the assumption I’d have to pay for transport or go get the car in FL and drive it back. About a month or so after ordering, I learned here on the forum that I could do a “courtesy delivery” where the car ships directly from Flat Rock to a dealer here for a nominal fee. That sounded great to me, so I set it up to be delivered to an in-town dealership, Sanderson Ford. They’re not the closest dealer to me but I figured I would throw them a bone since a) they don’t add markups to their vehicles they sell and b) I planned on ordering my Focus RS through them. Their claimed rate for courtesy delivery was $250.
I had no idea what quarter the allocation was for and after waiting almost two months with the order in material hold, I sent a follow up for Alan to ask their regional rep. Lo and behold, he came back with the answer that the rep was just about to pull the order. Waiting for the next Thursday to go by, I called Ford Performance and sure enough, I had a scheduled build date and followed up with Alan and obtained the VIN.
I waited for the build date pass and with excellent updates from jmbboss on BMO was able to see that the car shipped nearly instantly. Crunch time was on, I hadn’t finished up financing paper work with Autonation and Alan wasn’t very on-top of the car’s status as he was surprised to hear the thing had shipped, let alone been built. He quoted me 1/4 for a build date, which I think he mistook from the initial delivery ETA date. So we began to finalize everything in earnest. This process began when I emailed Alan on 12/14 took until 12/31 for a variety of reasons that stepped from that particular dealer’s unfamiliarity with the courtesy delivery process. What the particular fees were and who had to charge them, what papers need sent, etc, etc. It kind of went on and on with a 2-way Fedex required for each step with physical papers.
Here’s where my frustration sets in. Autonation has dealers everywhere (nations largest!). While I wasn’t delivering to an Autonation dealer, it seemed like they would’ve at least had somebody within the company that could handle these “what do I do” situations pretty easily. The process is also stuck in 1970. It is now 2016 and we still need to print papers in one location, fly them overnight to you, get your squiggly on them, and then fly them overnight back only to learn “oh hey, there’s something we missed” and then repeat the process. For the coup de grâce, the car was ready to go but I was told I couldn’t pick up the car until they Fedex’d a temporary tag because “oh yeah, we didn’t know about that”. To which I said F that, went on the Arizona MVD’s website and printed out a $1 3-day restricted permit. Give me my car now. That was enough to satisfy everyone.
I think had I gone entirely through the Autonation dealer, the paperwork would’ve been done in one step and I might’ve been out another few hundred more, maybe received the car at roughly the same time.. maybe sooner? Live and learn. Final out-the-door cost was MSRP + $699 dealer fee (the norm in Florida from what I understand) + $600 courtesy delivery fee (this includes both ends) + taxes and title. There was an “appearance protection” for $499 that lingered on the quotes that I had to ask 3 times for it to be removed, but eventually it was.
All through-out the process, response times to emails and calls took around 24 hours turn-around. The fleet contact that did the receiving at Sanderson, Becky, was responsive until the car was at the rail yard and I was trying to get a status on it. I didn’t get any call backs from her after that, presumably because they were waiting on paperwork from Autonation, but good lord, return people’s calls as a common courtesy. Alan was out on 12/30 and I had to jump between, no joke, about 5 people in one call before I go to a finance manager that told me they got the papers, hadn’t processed them, but would that day and let me know what’s up. Surprise, day ended with no phone call back. Both dealerships were sorely lacking on this aspect of customer service but from my experience, this is how Ford dealers operate for the most part. I never got this with any Audi dealer who was always returning calls and being proactive on any issues.
Delivery
Due to the lack of communication, they fully PDI’d the car on 12/30 so I didn’t have any opportunity to give them any of the persnickety requests that some people gave to their dealers as delivery instructions. All in all, whatever, they filled the car with 91 and washed it. They didn’t do a great job, but again, Ford. There are some very minor cosmetic issues but nothing I would’ve turned the car away for. There’s 2 small scratches that look buffable. The biggest thing is that the hood isn’t aligned quite right so when opened the passenger-side tip of it contacts the tip of the fender slightly. The rest of the car looks great. I’ll either take care of these myself (shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes in all) or take it to the dealer next week.
The car was ready for me when I pulled up. All I had to do was sign one paper for receipt of the car and I was off. This was nice but after the 2 full weeks of strife, if there were any hiccups, I would’ve been about to lose it.
Initial Impressions
The car is beautiful in every sense of the word. The Deep Impact Blue which I’ve always seen as a little purple, popped bright blue in the noon Arizona sun. As the day wore on, the color morphs deeper and richer until the inevitable purple tone in low-light. I’m actually pretty impressed by it’s characteristics for being a simple metallic paint. The form hits all the right notes, where the GT looks brutish and blunt on the front-end, the GT350 lower bonnet looks more ninja-like and fluid. It looks great in person. Pictures don’t do S550s justice, particularly with the GT350 accents. The LED taillights and DRL tri-bar are bright and look very high quality. I really wish they’d make the front turning signals LED lights though. The pulsating bulbs just look out of place compared to the rest.
Interior quality is pretty good. An improvement from my S197 Boss for sure. An evolution perhaps, not revolution. I like the faux wood grain of the non-rubber dash components. The fake stitching on the dash IMO drag down the otherwise upper-mid range appearance. The highlight of it all though is that steering wheel. Compared to the Boss steering wheel, the padding is incredibly more substantial, you can sink your fingers into it. It’s amazing how much depth it has and it has what seems like the ability to suck up a small lake bed of perspiration from from your palms. The Alcantara also feels softer than what I remember the Boss wheel being when new, more tactile from the fibers. I hope this holds up long term (not just the surface but the sponginess), but only time will tell.
The lowlight of the whole car is the speakers. I can’t emphasis how garbage they are. Even with the bass at max, my iPhone speakers provide deeper lows than this stock system in the Technology package. The stock Boss speakers were better. The stock speakers in my old base 2012 Focus SE were better. The speakers in my parent’s 1996 Taurus were better. I know, “it’s a performance car and I just want to listen to the engine”. That’s true, but I want this to be my daily driver. Sometimes I want to listen to the exhaust and engine, but sometimes I want to actually hear the radio through something other than a paper cup and string. I will be putting in something better sounding but I won’t be turning it into a 4-subwoofer thumping Civic.
How does the car feels to drive? I put about 100 miles on it yesterday. Coming from the 2013 Boss, here’s what I initially think. It feels low and heavy. Center of gravity feels good on the roads that I drove it on so far. It feels attached to the road, very much like the C7 Corvette of a friend that I put about a hundred miles on. However, the steering feels very numb. Number than the Boss, especially in the equivalent Sport steering mode. The MagRide has a small but noticeable difference on roads with unevenness, having the option to tweak this is appreciated even if it is just a binary switch. I was impressed by the two exhaust modes more which definitely lowers the volume by at least half on anything below WOT. My hope is to remove the cats, resonators or both to increase the volume at both levels because quite frankly the exhaust noise in Normal is barely perceptible on normal city driving and I could stand a little more volume in Sport mode.
The shifting experience is FANTASTIC. Oh. My. God. Anybody that doesn’t think it’s amazing probably hasn’t spent much time with an S197 MT-82. I haven’t run it on the track yet obviously so I can’t speak to issues when the car at the upper end of the rev range, but worlds better than the Boss. There’s extremely little give to the shifter mount. I’ve seen that it is attached directly to the trans rather than the Boss being mounted to the body and then packaged with the softest bushing possible. It’s firm, it finds the gear very easily and there’s a satisfying amount of feedback when you’ve full engaged the gear. The throw isn’t the shortest in the world but it doesn’t feel overly long, you can make spirited shifts in a reasonable amount of time for non-competition circumstances. The clutch is the lightest I have ever driven in any Mustang. The assist spring still provides a noticeable amount of assistance and makes it unfortunately non-linear. I’ll probably just yank the spring today though.
Driving around town, I never had to apply very much pressure to the brake pedal. They stop you with little effort. I did notice that because the pedal travel was so small to get the right amount of braking power, heel-toeing is harder to get right at least coming from the Boss which seemingly came down to near the same position as the gas pedal when braking which made it a simple pivot and blip. So far, I have to pivot my foot towards the front of the car pretty deeply to find the gas pedal for blip or risk having my face peeled off with too much braking power. It will take some getting used to.
UPDATE 1: I forgot to mention the seats which are great and not a let down. While there is less bolstering than the Boss Recaros, there is still enough there to hold you into the seat. I'm 5'9", 170lbs and they cup me pretty well. Feel of them is nice with the Alcantara being grippy and not slippery. The adjustable lumbar support is nicely placed. I turned on the seat coolers briefly and wow! they cool all the way up the seat. Not even my Fusion does that with its coolers which seem relegated to your butt and lower back. I could feel cooling in these Tech pack seats all the way up to my shoulders. This will be fantastic in the summer Arizona heat. I have no regrets now about the seats, none.
UPDATE 2: Sanderson did a pretty bad job on the detail. I'm sure this surprises no one. There were a few more spots I found going over the car this afternoon, mostly on the hood. Slightly gummy, about the size of a dime and didn't come off with quick detailer. You can tell they tried to scrub one of them off on the fascia pretty hard because there was scratching in an horizontal and vertical direction around it. Literally 30 seconds soaking with bug and tar remover and a quick wipe completely removed the spot. Same with the other spots. I seriously don't know why detail departments of dealers and carousel car wash places can't figure out that this product exists. I got most of the light scratches off the car with a little bit of wax and went around the rest of the car with quick detailer to make sure there was nothing else egregious. Thankfully they didn't do anything permanent. I know a few other weren't so lucky.
UPDATE 3: I've had a chance to revisit the audio system. Until now, I've kept the volume relatively low and have been disappointed by the low-range performance even with the bass at max, especially with the car on the road, the noise of the road and engine masks what little output the system has at a nominal volume. It's better if the car is off, but obviously what good is that. However, if you CRANK the volume (like 3/4ths to 4/5ths up), the system actually does have some decent low-range performance. I wouldn't call it thumping, but it's fills the cabin much better than the hollow sound you get when it's at a lower volume. Then you get pretty ear piercing high-range. I've come to be happy with bass at max, mid-range at a little less than half and treble at half. Again, you really have to be cranking it to a level most people would call "loud" to really get any decent sound quality out of it and then you can't turn it up much higher than that without the high-range clipping somewhat. So I still don't think it's great or what should've been installed in this car for the Tech package but it is not as terrible as I originally laid out.
====
This is my story so far. I plan to append to this with UPDATES and note them as such, including modifications. But I won’t be going as crazy as some people. I just want a good daily driver that will see some occasional track time. The Focus RS will probably get more track-related tweaks.
I picked up my car on NYE after a mind-torturing wait. My wait was far less than what some of the guys with earlier builds have or even still are experiencing, but still for people with instant gratification complexes ordering this car will play on your psyche. My car is G1343, Tech package.
Timeline
8/28 Order & Confirmation
11/12 VIN
12/4 Sticker
12/8 Blend
12/9 Produced
12/10 Released
12/12 Shipped via Rail
- 12/14 Battle Creek, MI
- 12/15 Hammond, IN
- 12/17 Riverdale, IL
- 12/18 Toluca, IL
- 12/19 Kansas City, KS
- 12/20 Olethe, KS - Waynoka, KS - Shattuck, OK
- 12/21 Friona, TX
- 12/22 Grants, NM - Winslow, AZ - Bellemont, AZ - Ash Fork, AZ
- 12/23 El Mirage, AZ
12/23 Arrived at Rail Yard
12/24 Unloaded
12/30 Received at Dealer via Truck
12/31 Pickup
Ordering
After my local dealers turned out to either be inventory-hoarders or out of allocations already in July, I turned to rapidly reloading the forum till my finger hurt. As luck would have it, I ran into one of [MENTION=16199]shelby_r[/MENTION]’s threads about an MSRP deal out of Florida. I thankfully was first post and he messaged me the contact info. I left a voicemail immediately and then called the dealership, Autonation Ford Del Ray, early in the morning (I was 3 hours behind here in AZ) to follow up. Alan was quick to return my call once he arrived at the office and the whole ordering step only took a few back and forths with deposit information, which by the way he stressed was fully refundable. I got a print out of the confirmation the same day.
I went on the assumption I’d have to pay for transport or go get the car in FL and drive it back. About a month or so after ordering, I learned here on the forum that I could do a “courtesy delivery” where the car ships directly from Flat Rock to a dealer here for a nominal fee. That sounded great to me, so I set it up to be delivered to an in-town dealership, Sanderson Ford. They’re not the closest dealer to me but I figured I would throw them a bone since a) they don’t add markups to their vehicles they sell and b) I planned on ordering my Focus RS through them. Their claimed rate for courtesy delivery was $250.
I had no idea what quarter the allocation was for and after waiting almost two months with the order in material hold, I sent a follow up for Alan to ask their regional rep. Lo and behold, he came back with the answer that the rep was just about to pull the order. Waiting for the next Thursday to go by, I called Ford Performance and sure enough, I had a scheduled build date and followed up with Alan and obtained the VIN.
I waited for the build date pass and with excellent updates from jmbboss on BMO was able to see that the car shipped nearly instantly. Crunch time was on, I hadn’t finished up financing paper work with Autonation and Alan wasn’t very on-top of the car’s status as he was surprised to hear the thing had shipped, let alone been built. He quoted me 1/4 for a build date, which I think he mistook from the initial delivery ETA date. So we began to finalize everything in earnest. This process began when I emailed Alan on 12/14 took until 12/31 for a variety of reasons that stepped from that particular dealer’s unfamiliarity with the courtesy delivery process. What the particular fees were and who had to charge them, what papers need sent, etc, etc. It kind of went on and on with a 2-way Fedex required for each step with physical papers.
Here’s where my frustration sets in. Autonation has dealers everywhere (nations largest!). While I wasn’t delivering to an Autonation dealer, it seemed like they would’ve at least had somebody within the company that could handle these “what do I do” situations pretty easily. The process is also stuck in 1970. It is now 2016 and we still need to print papers in one location, fly them overnight to you, get your squiggly on them, and then fly them overnight back only to learn “oh hey, there’s something we missed” and then repeat the process. For the coup de grâce, the car was ready to go but I was told I couldn’t pick up the car until they Fedex’d a temporary tag because “oh yeah, we didn’t know about that”. To which I said F that, went on the Arizona MVD’s website and printed out a $1 3-day restricted permit. Give me my car now. That was enough to satisfy everyone.
I think had I gone entirely through the Autonation dealer, the paperwork would’ve been done in one step and I might’ve been out another few hundred more, maybe received the car at roughly the same time.. maybe sooner? Live and learn. Final out-the-door cost was MSRP + $699 dealer fee (the norm in Florida from what I understand) + $600 courtesy delivery fee (this includes both ends) + taxes and title. There was an “appearance protection” for $499 that lingered on the quotes that I had to ask 3 times for it to be removed, but eventually it was.
All through-out the process, response times to emails and calls took around 24 hours turn-around. The fleet contact that did the receiving at Sanderson, Becky, was responsive until the car was at the rail yard and I was trying to get a status on it. I didn’t get any call backs from her after that, presumably because they were waiting on paperwork from Autonation, but good lord, return people’s calls as a common courtesy. Alan was out on 12/30 and I had to jump between, no joke, about 5 people in one call before I go to a finance manager that told me they got the papers, hadn’t processed them, but would that day and let me know what’s up. Surprise, day ended with no phone call back. Both dealerships were sorely lacking on this aspect of customer service but from my experience, this is how Ford dealers operate for the most part. I never got this with any Audi dealer who was always returning calls and being proactive on any issues.
Delivery
Due to the lack of communication, they fully PDI’d the car on 12/30 so I didn’t have any opportunity to give them any of the persnickety requests that some people gave to their dealers as delivery instructions. All in all, whatever, they filled the car with 91 and washed it. They didn’t do a great job, but again, Ford. There are some very minor cosmetic issues but nothing I would’ve turned the car away for. There’s 2 small scratches that look buffable. The biggest thing is that the hood isn’t aligned quite right so when opened the passenger-side tip of it contacts the tip of the fender slightly. The rest of the car looks great. I’ll either take care of these myself (shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes in all) or take it to the dealer next week.
The car was ready for me when I pulled up. All I had to do was sign one paper for receipt of the car and I was off. This was nice but after the 2 full weeks of strife, if there were any hiccups, I would’ve been about to lose it.
Initial Impressions
The car is beautiful in every sense of the word. The Deep Impact Blue which I’ve always seen as a little purple, popped bright blue in the noon Arizona sun. As the day wore on, the color morphs deeper and richer until the inevitable purple tone in low-light. I’m actually pretty impressed by it’s characteristics for being a simple metallic paint. The form hits all the right notes, where the GT looks brutish and blunt on the front-end, the GT350 lower bonnet looks more ninja-like and fluid. It looks great in person. Pictures don’t do S550s justice, particularly with the GT350 accents. The LED taillights and DRL tri-bar are bright and look very high quality. I really wish they’d make the front turning signals LED lights though. The pulsating bulbs just look out of place compared to the rest.
Interior quality is pretty good. An improvement from my S197 Boss for sure. An evolution perhaps, not revolution. I like the faux wood grain of the non-rubber dash components. The fake stitching on the dash IMO drag down the otherwise upper-mid range appearance. The highlight of it all though is that steering wheel. Compared to the Boss steering wheel, the padding is incredibly more substantial, you can sink your fingers into it. It’s amazing how much depth it has and it has what seems like the ability to suck up a small lake bed of perspiration from from your palms. The Alcantara also feels softer than what I remember the Boss wheel being when new, more tactile from the fibers. I hope this holds up long term (not just the surface but the sponginess), but only time will tell.
The lowlight of the whole car is the speakers. I can’t emphasis how garbage they are. Even with the bass at max, my iPhone speakers provide deeper lows than this stock system in the Technology package. The stock Boss speakers were better. The stock speakers in my old base 2012 Focus SE were better. The speakers in my parent’s 1996 Taurus were better. I know, “it’s a performance car and I just want to listen to the engine”. That’s true, but I want this to be my daily driver. Sometimes I want to listen to the exhaust and engine, but sometimes I want to actually hear the radio through something other than a paper cup and string. I will be putting in something better sounding but I won’t be turning it into a 4-subwoofer thumping Civic.
How does the car feels to drive? I put about 100 miles on it yesterday. Coming from the 2013 Boss, here’s what I initially think. It feels low and heavy. Center of gravity feels good on the roads that I drove it on so far. It feels attached to the road, very much like the C7 Corvette of a friend that I put about a hundred miles on. However, the steering feels very numb. Number than the Boss, especially in the equivalent Sport steering mode. The MagRide has a small but noticeable difference on roads with unevenness, having the option to tweak this is appreciated even if it is just a binary switch. I was impressed by the two exhaust modes more which definitely lowers the volume by at least half on anything below WOT. My hope is to remove the cats, resonators or both to increase the volume at both levels because quite frankly the exhaust noise in Normal is barely perceptible on normal city driving and I could stand a little more volume in Sport mode.
The shifting experience is FANTASTIC. Oh. My. God. Anybody that doesn’t think it’s amazing probably hasn’t spent much time with an S197 MT-82. I haven’t run it on the track yet obviously so I can’t speak to issues when the car at the upper end of the rev range, but worlds better than the Boss. There’s extremely little give to the shifter mount. I’ve seen that it is attached directly to the trans rather than the Boss being mounted to the body and then packaged with the softest bushing possible. It’s firm, it finds the gear very easily and there’s a satisfying amount of feedback when you’ve full engaged the gear. The throw isn’t the shortest in the world but it doesn’t feel overly long, you can make spirited shifts in a reasonable amount of time for non-competition circumstances. The clutch is the lightest I have ever driven in any Mustang. The assist spring still provides a noticeable amount of assistance and makes it unfortunately non-linear. I’ll probably just yank the spring today though.
Driving around town, I never had to apply very much pressure to the brake pedal. They stop you with little effort. I did notice that because the pedal travel was so small to get the right amount of braking power, heel-toeing is harder to get right at least coming from the Boss which seemingly came down to near the same position as the gas pedal when braking which made it a simple pivot and blip. So far, I have to pivot my foot towards the front of the car pretty deeply to find the gas pedal for blip or risk having my face peeled off with too much braking power. It will take some getting used to.
UPDATE 1: I forgot to mention the seats which are great and not a let down. While there is less bolstering than the Boss Recaros, there is still enough there to hold you into the seat. I'm 5'9", 170lbs and they cup me pretty well. Feel of them is nice with the Alcantara being grippy and not slippery. The adjustable lumbar support is nicely placed. I turned on the seat coolers briefly and wow! they cool all the way up the seat. Not even my Fusion does that with its coolers which seem relegated to your butt and lower back. I could feel cooling in these Tech pack seats all the way up to my shoulders. This will be fantastic in the summer Arizona heat. I have no regrets now about the seats, none.
UPDATE 2: Sanderson did a pretty bad job on the detail. I'm sure this surprises no one. There were a few more spots I found going over the car this afternoon, mostly on the hood. Slightly gummy, about the size of a dime and didn't come off with quick detailer. You can tell they tried to scrub one of them off on the fascia pretty hard because there was scratching in an horizontal and vertical direction around it. Literally 30 seconds soaking with bug and tar remover and a quick wipe completely removed the spot. Same with the other spots. I seriously don't know why detail departments of dealers and carousel car wash places can't figure out that this product exists. I got most of the light scratches off the car with a little bit of wax and went around the rest of the car with quick detailer to make sure there was nothing else egregious. Thankfully they didn't do anything permanent. I know a few other weren't so lucky.
UPDATE 3: I've had a chance to revisit the audio system. Until now, I've kept the volume relatively low and have been disappointed by the low-range performance even with the bass at max, especially with the car on the road, the noise of the road and engine masks what little output the system has at a nominal volume. It's better if the car is off, but obviously what good is that. However, if you CRANK the volume (like 3/4ths to 4/5ths up), the system actually does have some decent low-range performance. I wouldn't call it thumping, but it's fills the cabin much better than the hollow sound you get when it's at a lower volume. Then you get pretty ear piercing high-range. I've come to be happy with bass at max, mid-range at a little less than half and treble at half. Again, you really have to be cranking it to a level most people would call "loud" to really get any decent sound quality out of it and then you can't turn it up much higher than that without the high-range clipping somewhat. So I still don't think it's great or what should've been installed in this car for the Tech package but it is not as terrible as I originally laid out.
====
This is my story so far. I plan to append to this with UPDATES and note them as such, including modifications. But I won’t be going as crazy as some people. I just want a good daily driver that will see some occasional track time. The Focus RS will probably get more track-related tweaks.
Sponsored
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