If you were told the car is in SHP status, it's been assigned, built, issued a VIN, and is in transport.
There are two things the dealer can check - one is updated daily. The first is a 'Vehicle Status Assigned / In-Transit Report'. This is a paper printout of what's coming to the dealership, and is specific to the dealership. The columns you'll be interested in at this point are 'Ship Date', 'Shp Loc', and 'Dlr ETA'
A 'Shp Loc' of 'OC' will translate to 'Ocean Transit'. It's on the boat from Suzuka (generally, it's loaded within a day or so of being built), and will be arriving at port in approx. 2-3 weeks. If you're really lucky, you'll have a two letter US state abbreviation in place of 'OC'. West Coast shipments generally arrive in Portland, SanFran, or San Diego. East Coast shipments generally arrive in Baltimore, from what I know (and, yes, they *do* ship vehicles from Japan to Atlantic ports!). Of my five new Hondas, 3 came to Portland (including the two hybrids), 1 to Baltimore, and one was built in Marysville.
From the US port, your car will be put on a rail car, and sent to your nearest 'Delivery Point'. This is a regional distribution center (usually within 50-100mi), where the cars get sorted out and put on trucks to the individual dealerships. This step is allowed up to two weeks, but they generally get it done in one, especially if you live in or near a major metro area.
'Dlr ETA' will be a one week time period (M-F) where they anticipate delivery to the dealer. When my car was updated with this info, my salesperson remarked that they would beat the end of that week with that - and they did. My ETA was marked 0116-0120, and it arrived at the dealer on Jan 18 (neither of us knew this at the time, as he was on vacation until the 21st, and I wasn't in a rush to have the car the day it came in - I should have been, given what happened to my front bumper as a result of the ft. license frame install...
The other tool the dealer has is called 'Honda Interactive Network', or 'IN' (they use lowercase 'n', btw). Using this online tool, your dealer can track not only your car in progress, but also look up the manufacturing codes for a particular car - that's how I reserved mine - it was an allocation car that we figured out the color / option code for (MagPearl w/o Navi), and as that was exactly what I wanted, my name went on it even before it was built. They can also locate any in-progress or available car in the country using IN. So if your dealer has no Galaxy Gray HCH-II's with Navi in stock or on the way to them, for example, they can locate one as close as possible for a dealer trade for you. If you haven't guessed, this is the one that's updated daily.
Generally, the dealer will tell you the car takes 4 weeks to get from Suzuka to your dealership, but most of the time, it'll get there in 3. When it does...enjoy your car. I like mine more every day
