Are other Smarties out thre?
I see the process as some variation of what Penske and smart did in 2007/2008. I configured a smart fortwo, chose a dealer (or one was chosen for me), and paid $99 fully refundable fee (not a deposit) online. Then I was placed in queue. Months later, the dealer called me and emailed me with my smart's VIN and anticipated arrival date. Some people were able to track their smart online through the U.S. port of entry. These were all Penske Auto Group dealers, so PAG had some control over pricing of the reserved smarts.
This all worked fine until people who had reserved smarts didn't pick theirs up. Each one of these created an "orphan" smart. To some extent, each dealer was on their own as to what to do with orphans. Most would make a list of interested orphan adoption customers (normally those already has reserved smarts but wanted one earlier). Also, many dealers started adding expensive options to the orphans, like $2,000/$3,000 navigation systems. Over time, the orphan inventory became so large that delaers had inventory to sell on the spot. Now you can go to a smart dealer and pick one up off the lot, like most other cars.
The thing is, even though dealers played games with the orphans, the smart customer online community was actively involved in pointing them out. This helped keep the process in line (somewhat).