Dealer Allocation vs Order

@Cobra is correct in my experience. And to answer @P.Walker questions. The ability to order 2024 cars will not be impacted by current inventory. Dealers always have an overlap of prior year models and IMO that overlap, especially when there is a new design coming, can be a golden deal. Anyone looking for 2023's should go to that dealer and negotiate hard.

Your question P.Walker about "is your order a dealer allocation or is it in addition to their allocation vehicles" is technically not the correct question. In order for the dealer to get a car, they need an allocation. It is not your car until they receive it and sell it to you. You provide a deposit that you can lose if you don't take possession, the dealer then has to sell to someone else.

Now, the better question is how many allocations does the dealer have and are they using them for themselves or for custom customer orders.

Dealer A receives 10 allocations. They could order 5 cars to sit on their lot and then they can hold 5 allocations for custom customer orders. Once those 5 custom allocations are sold and you come along, you will not be able to order a car from that dealer. On top of that, you have to know if Ford is limiting production. My opinion is that Ford will not limit GT trims but they are limiting Dark Horse trims. Since GT trims aren't limited you will always be able to go to a dealer and order a custom car if you don't like what's on their lot. If the dealer has one allocation for a Dark Horse (like my dealer) they can choose to hold it for a customer or spec it out themselves and order it to sit in the showroom for a huge mark up. You can either buy that Dark Horse or find a dealer with an open allocation to custom spec your own order.

I had a literal two hour conversation with my dealer about allocations and this is the understanding I received. This is the first car I have ordered and I wanted to understand the allocation process.