Absolutely, Rene. But sadly, many sales people just look at you daft when you try to arrange anything more than five minutes in the car.
We have/had a different experience – granted, we haven’t had many cars on the scheme yet, but all our test drives (around 5 or 6) were all, how to put it.. “out of the ordinary”.
Some salesmen had to talk to their managers to accommodate our wishes, but for all test drives so far we got what we wanted. We test drove an ID3, which we were allowed to take home and back on a route that we drive weekly (so we could judge the car directly against our current one) – that one was around 80 minutes. The Golf GTE that we ended up with we test drove twice even, the first test drive we got handed a GTE with empty battery, so that was kinda pointless (still enjoyed it, through a scenic route in the brecon beacons) – and the second test drive (different dealership) in the GTE we got a charged one, plus were allowed to keep it for 5 hours with unlimited miles, just had to put £5 of petrol in it. Ended up driving around 100 miles and two hours (and then proceeded to place the order right then).
Our SEAT when we bought it, same thing, were allowed to drive 60 miles home and back from Cardiff.
That’s not to say that there’s no bad experiences, i know there are – it’s just, for us, the exception rather than the norm. Dealerships quite often accommodate “extra wishes”, as long as it’s something reasonable. For the Sportage test drive we had, we drove it home yet again (80 minutes again), too. The Cupra Born on the other hand that we wanted to test drive, we could’ve only had for 30 minutes – because they only had one demonstrator that’s basically booked fully for the next few months.
Just our experience, i understand that it’s different for others. It never costs anything to enquire, if a dealership doesn’t want to help you, just go to the next one, would be my suggestion (our VW dealership isn’t the closest, it’s 40ish miles away but that’s where we got the best service). There are good dealerships out there.
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.