The dealership I ended up ordering an '18 through said that you can't special order anything on a LC destined for the US. Actually, what he said was you can special order whatever you want and in 3 or 4 months Toyota will cancel the order.
Basically, Toyota USA orders a certain number of certain color combinations, and that is what you can pick from. For example, if you want an '18 in Silver with Terra interior you would be out of luck if Toyota USA didn't order any of those. I'd guess Toyota Japan wants to know what they need to build for the US with at least some anticipation so they can order materials- eg. how much terra material do they need for the US 18s? So, they may require Toyota USA pre-order the color combos pretty early in 17 if not late 16.
Anyhow, if you want to order something that isn't even a possibility in the US, like an interior or exterior color that is not available in the US but the rest of the world can get, forget about it or get an LX.
When it came time to order mine, the salesman was able to pull up the production schedule for the group of cars that will be loaded on the next ship. Some were already reserved for other dealerships as pre-sold and others were destined for showrooms. If a particular car is only destined for the showroom the salesman could reserve it his/her dealership had available "allocation" for '18 LC's. Not sure how many LC's are allocated to each dealer and whether it is per quarter, per year... However, if there was no allocation available the dealer would have had to search domestic inventory and tried to make a deal with whoever had the car to get it.
The salesman gave me a copy of the build sheet with a temporary VIN/ID number for the one reserved for me. He gave me the date it would be built and the date the ship was supposed to sail. He said the ocean crossing takes about 10 days then the LC would be in the port in California (Long Beach?) for a couple of weeks having the port installed options put in, clearing customs, etc... and then the cars would be shipped to whatever dealership they are heading for. Total time from build to dealership is 6 weeks-ish. I've been getting updates about every 2 weeks.
The first LC I ordered was "damaged in port" which the salesman said is very rare. Toyota will make an insurance claim, fix the car and eventually it'll go to another dealership. In the meanwhile, I had to reserve another one that had not been built yet and will hopefully see it in Mid-November.
EDIT: Maybe a group of owners could petition Toyota USA to order certain things for 2019. For example, if there is lots of interest in Amazon Green paint and Shell Beige interiors, if a group of existing owners wrote a letter to Toyota USA maybe they would order those things for 2019 or 2020. I'll be good with my '18 for at least 5 years, and probably more, but I'd support an effort like that if I didn't have to lead it.
