It's great not to have a specific deadline! It took me about seven months to complete my new car shopping journey last year; started in May and didn't sign on the dotted line until December.
Of course, when adding in lead time between signing on the dotted line and accepting delivery, the grand total adds up to eleven months!Delivery of my CR-V Sport Touring Hybrid (what a mouthful) took three and a half months, which was about 45 days longer than projected. Honda had a major chip shortage in Q1 of this year, which is what caused the delay. During this time, they actually decided to complete builds on lower trim models minus the blind spot indicator, so folks who ordered the EX (non-hybrid) or Sport (hybrid) trims in some cases got screwed out of a blind spot indicator.
Ironically, I learned the Toyota RAV4 XLE Premium hybrid on which I had placed a reservation in October 2022 was on the truck en route to Michigan the very day I took home my new Honda...LOL. I wound up cancelling my reservation on the RAV4 and after some hassle got my $500 deposit returned. (Time from reservation to delivery of the RAV4 would have been five and a half months.)
What pisses me off is for 2024, there is a new CR-V Sport-L trim, which like mine is a hybrid with leather seats, includes blind spot indicator, includes heated front seats & wheel, includes 9" touchscreen with Sirius XM availability and includes power lift gate. The only difference is the Sport-L has 18" inch wheels instead of 19" (who cares about that?) and has an 8-speaker sound system instead of 12. The MSRP of that trim is about $1,500 cheaper than mine. I probably would've went with the Sport-L in a heartbeat over the Sport Touring.
