On my way to becoming an HHR owner(I hope).
 

I went to the dealer tonight and ordered up my HHR.If it gets built,it will be a Cardinal Red 5 speed 2LT with a gray cloth interior and a block heater.I was hoping for an Onstar delete credit but that's not available for retail orders(and no,there are no 1 car fleet orders.I asked.)The spotter mirror listed in the vehicle build section of the GM corporate website isn't in the dealer's system either.It's frustrating when all these different info sites don't agree with one another.
Here's hoping the American Axle mess is settled soon so my HHR gets built.Otherwise it's on to plan "B".There are no 2LT 5 speed 2008s within 500 miles of Metro Detroit so I was playing around the car locator feature on the GM website and was surprised at how many 2007 HHRs are still out there.I even found 3 2LT 5 speeds(2 in Georgia,1 in California)!and that's without hitting the dealer listings in many metro areas.And there's still some Cuppucino Frost,Majestic Amythest and Golden Teal cars out there!

I saw on the news yesterday (Detroit WVIZ) that the UAW told their America Axel members to prepare for a long strike. Just last week the news reported they were close to a deal.

I don't understand dealers, they never seem to have in inventory the vehicles with option I want. Like you, I just wanted manuals, I had to get an automatic in 2006 but we did find a manual when we bought the 2008.

Good luck.

I'm sure next time the dealer will call you before they get their inventory and see what you want them to carry. :roll:


When I bought mine they only had 2 manuals on the lot, the rep at the dealer said that Atlanta metro area is considered an "automatic market", they just don't sell a lot of manuals around here. They have tons of trucks and 'vettes on the lot, too, and almost none of them manuals. If they don't sell a certain type of car or certain options, they're not going to stock them.

Ouch!

My point is, our dealer had one SS manual which sold the day in came in. When they did an inventory search for a SS manual, several showed up, all but three were sold. One was 50 miles away, the other two were over 185 mile away.

SE Michigan is not a automatic town, there are many automotive enthusiasts that want manuals. Same thing happened with the GTO's, they only ones left around here were auto, couldn't find a manual to save your life.

There were more 5 speed SS cars in dealers inventory than non SS cars when I checked.Which makes sense being that the SS is definitely a performance car versus the standard cars which aren't really considered performance cars.
BTW,I nosed around the national locator some more this morning and found 3 more 2.4 5 speed 2007s-one of them is even a 1LT!Loading up on info in case I need plan "B".

When were you checking? Did you use the chevy.com site or have your dealer search?

Our dealer was searching the first two weeks of this month. I was also told the on-line inventory system has been broken for several weeks. For example, my dealer, Wally Edgar in Lake Orion, shows a black auto SS in stock up until a few days ago yet that vehicle was sold first part of this month.

How do you know if the vehicle is auto or manual with out bringing up the window sticker, which is still broke :confused:. I went through the chevy site, selected locate vehicle, entered in my zip, hhr and ss. It found several in the area and when I view inventory I can see the vin and MSRP but clicking on window sticker provides an error window that says:

"There was a problem generating the window sticker for the vehicle you selected. Please try again later."

It has been like this since I started looking back around the first of the month.

That is why I said before that the vehicles the dealer search found were already sold when my salesperson called the dealer.

Wally does have a 1LT, black/black manual on his lot.

Here's what to do.Go to the GM corporate website-click on GM vehicles-click on "Chevrolet"-click on "build a vehicle" after entering your ZIP-build an SS any old way you want-go to the last page and click "find a vehicle"-click on a dealer-click on "view inventory"-click on a particular V.I.N.-it shows up.I know it works-I just tried it.Must be Electronic Alzheimer's or something.
This is no guarantee that the listed vehicles are in stock or still available for purchase,but you can at least view what they have.

Darn, that works. I wonder why when you go in to the inventory search through the Chevy site it doesn't work? Oh well, we have our SS so we are done looking.

I'm far from any kind of computer whiz,so I can only guess that it's a symptom of GM's various computer systems not being able to talk to each other-the very reason that GM bought EDS all those years ago.
C'mon American Axle/UAW-settle!I want my HHR!

I was over at our dealer this weekend in Indy and they had 1 ss it was a manual and it was red.