No one will really know anything until the next round of allocation, which we might get info on the first week of August... and I suspect we may not see any V60 PE in that. They are rarer than I think folks realize if you're coming from outside Volvo. It is not simply a matter of "yeah I'd like one". They make a few dozen at most for the US.
One does have to separate the traditional mindset of an order. Car manufacturers do not have their production design around orders. Some are certainly better than others. Volvo is a small company in the terms of car manufacturing, so while they have their advantages, order flexibility isn't one. In normal times and with a normal car, Volvo's personal at corporate does a great job being flexible and moving units around to satisfy the needs of customers, so from the customer perspective this isn't normally nearly as big of a factor.
Volvo streamlines production with the trims and packages... part of the reason for Core, Plus, and Ultimate was to further streamline this. When a dealer is giving allocation we are told what model, trim, and motor a car will have. Normally we have until a certain date to add options/packages, or change colors. If I don't have the right one, this is where Volvo has been great, they'd help us find one in exchange. So if I had a customer that wanted a V60cc and I didn't have any in my pipeline, Volvo would work with me to get one, and they'd probably take an XC60 or maybe V90cc away from me. Allocation is the splitting up of the production pie. However, there is no extra pie right now. The next option we normally would have is dealer trading, even for unbuilt cars, but that's not happening either. We generally have enough of the regular stuff, when we have an order request for something we don't have it, no one does, and if they do, we don't have something they'd want back. Think of each model, as a pie.. so the XC90 is pumpkin pie, but the XC90 recharge might be pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Well a V60 PE is one of those specialty personal pies.
So what would currently happen is a dealer can put an order frame in to Volvo. This alerts the regional Volvo allocation manager of where needs are. Again, normally it's formality placeholder while they juggle thing. Our regional manager though asked us not to put any of these orders in, as they will be ignored. Simply put, they know there is no way to fill the orders. The exception to this rule was the V60PE, which we were asked to place any orders we had a few weeks ago with customer names attached. This is likely what your dealer did, and all they could do. I put one order in the day we were told to, and another the following. I told both I didn't expect it to be a sure thing and had been working with both for more than a month prior.
So that's all just the Volvo side really. A dealer is part of the mix too. And the conversation you have is with a dealer, so that can make for a huge variety in the actions and experience. What I do for any car I don't have allocation for is take a $500 deposit (refundable). This puts your name on an excel sheet we keep as a dealership of what car you want and what order you put the request in. As we get allocation we first look at our list and see if any order requests can be fulfilled by that and fill those first. Any unsold allocation becomes available order frames for new customers walking in the door, and eventually becomes on the lot stock cars (if they make it that far). But nothing requires this to be what happens. A sales person could say "yeah I got your order" and then sit on their chair twiddling their thumbs until they have an order. I'm not sure honestly if all sales folks are able to see the order frames... at our dealer anyone in sales can see and modify orders, but when I worked at the Ford store, it wasn't until I was a commercial sales person that I was able to. So now you are left with the sales manager to keep track. I have the best sales manager I've ever worked for now, and generally have always had good sales managers, but I've seen many in the industry that aren't. They are not all motivated for these 6 month out sales and some have a mindset against orders in general. So lots of variables, but based on the communication the OP is getting here, it sounds like a similar process to what we have, or at least, there aren't any red flags showing deviation.
