I think it’s less about whether a dealership is good or bad but more about specific sales people. The salesperson who dealt with our BMW X1 order last year was superb. They weren’t the nominated Motability specialist but I had used them before for a private purchase (which was also handled superbly) so went directly to them for our Motability order.
The good points were numerous and started with being completely honest that they had no immediately available build slots and a wait of 6 to 7 months could be in order (most dealers won’t tell people about build slot allocations unless pressed, preferring to imply that they have ordered the car when they haven’t). I made it clear that I’d give them until the next months allocations to secure us a slot or I’d look elsewhere. They secured us a build slot the week after.
We’d had a good few hours test drive before ordering but then worried that the standard seats weren’t very good and we should have ordered Sport seats. The salesperson arranged for us to have a brand new (registered that week) X1 M-Sport for a whole day, even though we had already ordered (we added the Sport Seats as a result and have been very glad that we did).
They updated me every couple of weeks on the order status, without me chasing. Because the order started moving backwards, they went out of their way to secure a cancelled order from another dealership (one that wasn’t even in their group). When that order got pushed back they phoned the central factory build allocations people and got it restored to the original date. They got us the car (factory order with options) in less than 4 months. They also spoke to BMW Technical and obtained very detailed info that I wanted on the functionality of an option we had ordered. To top it all, they gave us nearly £1k discount off the AP and options.
So, to answer your question, we had no adaptations but none of the above could have been achieved had we ordered online.
We are likely to leave the scheme when the lease on our car expires. Guess which salesperson I will be speaking to first about a private purchase?