Renting a Q5 from the dealer?
 

Hey folks, as a prospective customer, would an Audi dealership let you rent one of their courtesy vehicles as an extended test drive? The dealerships in my area will only let you drive a certain route on a test drive, and it's a very short/insufficient route in terms of letting you really experience the car.

Thanks!

Find a different dealer...Ours suggested we take it home for the weekend, when I mentioned we were headed to Boston that night and was nervous to bring it into the city not owning it, he stated that is what insurance is for. If they really want you to buy a 45k+ vehicle you should be able to use it more than 3 miles during test route.

Agreed, find another dealer. My rural NJ dealer took a copy of my license, gave me the keys, and said "have fun, see you soon."

However, the more urban dealers insist on being in the car with you.

Which dealer was this? I would love to test drive a new Audi for a weekend the next time I go up to NH for the weekend. Maybe even take it for a spin at the Audi winter driving school in Dalton!

Another good reason to avoid buying a dealer demo. :)

I'll just parrot what everyone else says and tell you to find another dealer.

Overnight test drives are not uncommon... It's strange to me that your dealer(s) wouldn't allow such a thing for a legitimate prospective buyer.

Are the dealers in your area all part of the same Auto Group?

The dealer would not let me take the car that I was interested in on an extended test drive. He did not want me putting miles on a car that I may not buy. I had to ask him for a slightly used 2013 Q5 Prestige (I new it was there since I was reviewing his inventory). I also was only able to keep it for a couple of hours.

Much different at the Infiniti store for our last car. They let me have a new one off of the lot while I waited on the transfer of ours from a different store. It took nearly two weeks.

If it was not for the fact that my wife was only interested in the Q5, I would have went somewhere else.

I have had a long term relationship with the local dealer, so it wasn't a issue asking for a Q5 to use for a day or two. In fact, when I inquired about it, they said sure we will get the keys, and see you on Monday.

Do they have any loaners that they can give you overnight? When I was looking at q5s, my dealer offered a loaner for the night.

Interesting... Last year, we were planning European Delivery on a new Q5. We were ready to order, if the timing worked out with our European honeymoon. However we never got to signing any paperwork, because details on production were never set in stone. Since we couldn't get any assurances that the dates would work, we moved on. While this was all happening, we were also planning our wedding. Since we knew we were going to buy a Q5 in the future, we asked if we could borrow or rent a loaner Q5 to use as our wedding car for the weekend. We were even willing put place a deposit for a future purchase. Unfortunately we were rejected. We were told Audi doesn't rent cars or give out loaner cars like that. Basically I got the sense that if we had already purchased the car, then there may have been a possibility of loaning a car, however since we were still a prospective buyer they weren't willing to loan us out a car. In the end, we purchased an SQ5 with that dealership a year later, but we had to find alternatives for our wedding car.

Sorry I'm going to go on a little rant. Honestly I love the salesman I dealt with throughout my entire process, but honestly his dealership always seemed reluctant to go above and beyond to lure me in as a potential buyer. What do you do? I had A LOT of loyalty towards my salesman because he always went above and beyond to help me throughout this ED process, but I had mixed feelings about his dealership. I don't want to say the dealership stereotyped us as little kids (my wife and I might look like we are in our early 20s) wasting their time, but sometimes I got that sense. I always had mixed feelings. For example, the first time we visited this dealership, we weren't serious about buying yet, but it was our first time walking into Audi and we wanted to find out more information about the Q5. We walked in and we were basically ignored for 10 minutes. We were never greeted or acknowledged. That left a bad taste in our mouth. We said SCREW IT, we are leaving without anyone talking to us. We had gotten in our car and I had even started my car. That's when my salesman chased us down and asked if there was anything he could help us with. I know he had been working with another customer at the time, but there were others who simply ignored us. A little reluctantly, we went back in and explained what had just happened. He was very helpful and he was actually the one who suggested European Delivery to us. So you see in the end, I wasn't sure if I should stay loyal to my salesman even though I didn't feel all that great about the dealership.

Unfortunately this isn't the first time this has happened for my wife. When she went into a BMW dealership a few years back looking for the 128i, she was told she could not test drive the car unless she was going to buy the car. Guess what happened? She bought that exact car soon afterwards from another dealership. :) It's just interesting how some salesman and dealerships function.