| since they were not what people wanted (by and very large). The longer a car sits on the lot, the more money a dealership loses on that car. When a slicktop was ordered, there was nothing special about it, it simply was ordered just like every T-top. The inventory manager checked the boxes for options desired, or in this case, did not check the option group that included T-tops. Sometime later the truck shows up, and there is the slicktop along with every other car ordered on that inventory request. Most people think something special or mystical is going on when their car has to be ordered, because they have to wait for it to come "directly" from the factory. That's mostly a bunch of crap dealers tell them to make them feel special, therefore a positive for the dealer (or so the dealer thinks) in the customers' eyes. Truth is, most of the time almost half of the wait is the special ordered car is never ordered until the next batch of cars is ordered. Thats how it was at my dealership anyway, and mine was typical of the rest in the city I lived in. So sure, they took note that they had to order a car they didnt have (and trust me they try to get it from other dealers first, they'll trade cars just to get it in faster which results in less potential for a customer to become a pain in the ass, the fact that a slicktop had to be ordered from the factory indicates that no dealers within reasonable distance had any in stock) but they likely never actually ordered it until they had a full batch of cars they needed. They typically arent going to lose profit on that slicktop by having it on a truck alone. I know this stuff firsthand because I was a Nissan salesman while in college, I may have sold some of the last new (untitled) '96's in the US. On a sidenote, cars weren't ordered directly from the factory, well at least not in the southeast, when we ordered cars, they came from some center in Jacksonville where they all came off the ships. That was where we got a really nice 96 TT from during the winter of '98. "Fresh" out of the factory, sticker in window and all the plastic wrapping intact. 5speed Pathfinders had to be "special ordered" too. No one wanted them. I dont need to bother to look up sales figures to point out the lack of desirability for slicktops or 5speed pathfinders. It simply is a fact. I am not bashing slicktops, I am not going to pretend like I love them either, I dont, They are Z's and they are cool by default, BUT I'm in the boat that a sportscar should have some sort of roof option whether it be targa or T-top, I personally hated my last car's "sunroof" and cant go back to driving a car with a metal roof. That's my taste, obviously you either felt differently to begin with or found yourself in a slicktop by circumstances and have grown to prefer them.
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