As numerous folks have noted already, Nissan should have made the reservations/order process a regional gig from the very start, plain and simple.
Take only reservations from the Tier 1 states first, fill the orders that come in up to a certain date, then move on to Tier 2, 3, or however many tiers you have. And do the same thing. Done. Simple. Transparent. Clear. Fair. Doesn't raise expectations of the sort that were raised among the thousands of us who reserved in states like Colorado (where I'm at) in April of 2010.
Can someone give me a reasonable argument for why you open reservations nationwide only to focus on folks in a small number of those states after doing so?
What is the advantage of doing this over a clear, regionalized reservations/rollout process (like the one for the Mistubishi I) -- because there certainly is nothing but downsides from a customer service/customer relations standpoint to starting with a big national reservations extravaganza, and then saying, well, it was "really" a regional exercise from the very beginning.