As others have said, if a dealership treats me in a sub-par way, then they don’t get my business, there are plenty of dealerships around, ok, they might not be just down the road, but so what, I’d rather travel for good service than suffer a crap one locally.
Accompanied short test drives are the norm at some dealerships – such as Arnold Clark, as they won’t spend the money on their insurance cover to allow unaccompanied drives.
Most dealerships I went to were very good, worst were Renault Perth – basically told me to go away. VW Aberdeen, ignored me, then were extremely meh about anything I wanted to look at. Honda Aberdeen – salesman was very rude and test drive was a joke, less than 3 minutes. Smaller rural/small town independents tended to be better than big groups. The brilliant dealerships locally for me were Ford Forfar, Kia Forfar, Skoda Perth, BMW Aberdeen, Citroen Montrose (no longer in business). All allowed unaccompanied test drives, rural ones were “here’s the keys, keep it as long as you need it, we close at 6pm…”. BMW was 2 hours max – but that’s plenty of time.
Not as much choice nowadays as dealership models mean lots of smaller ones are closing leading to monopoly issues. Arnold Clark for instance has loads of brands sewn up locally between Aberdeen, Dundee and Perth, hence my using them for my Hyundai – the Dundee branch Motability guy was very good to be fair.
In life, it's not who you know that's important, it's how your wife found out.