MR Mark Winter Agree with you completely,24 hour test drive should be available if required.If you don’t need it and 1 hour is enough,then good for you but some people absolutely need a lot longer than a short test drive as all our needs are different.
So what need is there that requires you to test drive the car for 24h, that you can’t figure out within 1 hour? Don’t say “seat comfort”, that’s not a reason – you can judge that within an hour or two.
And after that, i’d like to hear how you’d realise that. Because obviously, people are gonna pissed off majorly if they have to wait 30 days instead of 30 hours for a free slot for a test drive especially on new models, since dealerships usually have one car per model as demonstrator (often not even that, we’re driving 60 miles one way on saturday because that’s the closest dealer to us that has a GTE demonstrator). Assuming of course you’re not the guy paying for the second, third and fourth demonstrator while also somehow increasing the size of the dealership lot to park all those demonstrators, and explaining to dealerships why it’s totally fine to have a demonstrator with 60.000 miles on the clock after one year, while of course paying for the petrol/angry pixies and insurance too.
That being said, dealers do accommodate needs. If you need it for two hours, they usually can wring that out of the cars schedule. We were offered a 30 minute test drive, told them it wouldn’t be enough because we wanted to drive “this route” (our home route), and this is the answer i got.
This is obviously also the reason why we need to drive 120 miles on saturday to test drive the GTE, which we’ll get for 60 minutes unaccompanied. Am i happy about that? Hell no, i could’ve done without that drive there – but it is what it is. Btw: read closely, they have ONE GTE within the group. That’s five dealerships just in a 30 mile radius around us. In some circumstances you might be better off to just order one unseen, have them build and deliver it, and you’ll get to sit in it quicker than if you’d be waiting for everyone to “own” it for 24h.
It just doesn’t make sense.
Prior: SEAT Ateca Xcellence Lux 1.5 TSI DSG MY19, VW Golf GTE PHEV DSG MY23
Current: Hyundai Ioniq 6 Ultimate
Next: we'll see what's available in 2028.