This is the third MINI we have ordered. The tracking process hasn't really changed in 15 years. I don't take anything I hear too seriously. I know it is a bit of information but I don't assume it corresponds to that thing we like to call reality. This time around, the MyGarage tracking feature has been about a day ahead of the ASK-MINI phone thing. The nice people who answer the phone if you aren't satisfied with the auto responder have not told me anything that MyGarage hadn't already told me. I think they put you on hold, take a cigarette break, and then tell you they couldn't find any other info. That's what I hope anyway.
All three of our MINIs have taken almost exactly three months, from order to liberating the car from the dealer in Hawaii. This time, production started much sooner than the other two times, so I was hopeful the whole process would be shorter. But a couple of one-week stoppages at the factory, a slow boat to California, two weeks in Long Beach waiting for a boat to Hawaii, and now 3 days sitting at the port in Honolulu a mile from the dealer means we will pick it up at the earliest on Monday Aug. 16, three months and a day, I believe, since we placed the order. Maybe 3 months is a physical law of the universe for us.
I enjoy the tracking and the waiting, even when I hate it.