I thought I would post our experience in purchasing a DD. TL;DR: We have a VIN on a to be built RT TNG in Destroyer Grey, Blacktop and Vitra with blind spot and technology.
After lurking around here in Jan and Feb, we spent most of March looking for a Durango. It will be a tow vehicle, so we were specifically looking for first: Tow-N-Go first and second: Tow Group IV. We were having a really hard time finding any dealerships with the options we wanted and the dealers couldn't build anything with the blind spot monitoring. Chip shortages. If we did find blind spot at a dealership already, it wasn't Tow-N-Go. We test drove one Tow-N-Go and loved the drive of it. To our butts, it felt very different than an RT.
We were getting very close to settling for something that didn't meet our specs when we found a dealership that had a Durango on order with blind spot and they told us that it received a VIN, THAT DAY (btw, date ordered = Oct 8, 2020). We rushed over and asked if we could change a ton of specs on it (convert it to Tow-N-Go, change the color, interior to Vitra, etc.). They wanted a deposit to ask the plant if they could make the changes, so we obliged. It took two weeks to get confirmation, but we did end up getting confirmation that all of our changes were accepted! Lots of calling and checking, eventually the GM was the one who gave us the good news.
So, now we wait. The dealership asked the plant to prioritize the build (why wouldn't they prioritize a car that's already spoken for?). We're in Canada, so there is no way to track the progress of the build process other than through the dealership. So we'll be making frequent calls to ask for updates. My only concern is the actual availability of the chips and if a blind spot chip was "set aside" for our vehicle since day one.
We're super excited and we're really hoping that since it's "sold", it can be bumped sooner than the current May 24 build start date so we have a chance to tow with it this summer.