Most of the time now I just use main dealerships for the test drive, and, if I buy a car from that make (whether through a broker [new] or supersite [nearly new/second hand]), I would then use it for servicing, but I wouldn't bother listening to all their spiel and sales patois (finance etc), as I would've gleaned far more from doing my research here (including via the forum) and on similar useful websites.

I suspect in the not-too-distant future, franchised dealers will be few and far between (maybe in the larger cities only) and we will pay local indie dealers to 'rent' a car for a look around/test drive after they advertise to see what people want. As others have said, things wouldn't be so dire if the manufacturers weren't incessantly squeezing dealers on new car sales whilst the dealers themselves encourage poorly trained (in the cars themselves) sales staff, ending up with glorified estate agents who know diddly-squat and who mainly want to flog optional extras and finance customers neither want or need, never mind the mechanics whose knowledge extends to basics and plugging in an OBD port.

It doesn't now help either when, via the (in my opinion) utterly stupid, government-led commercial property revlauations and changes to how they calculate business rates badly penalises organisations and business that have low rise buildings covering large areas, but low usage (relative to useful floor space or numbers of employees) of local government services. Car dealerships selling new cars on small margins with huge forecourts and glass palaces cannot reasonably survive as they are now, in my view.