I'm hoping that stand-alone dealerships, if many of them ever come, will help, but I had an odd experience last week when I finally went in to test drive the GV80. As I've mentioned before on these forums, I have a Lincoln Nautilus coming off of lease in 3 months, and have primarily been looking at the GV80 to replace it. Only other vehicle I've looked at is the MB GLE 450, though I haven't test driven it yet.
Back to the experience, I live in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. The closest dealership to me that had any 3.5 Prestiges to test drive is in Bowie MD. It is a very large Hyundai dealership and had a lot of Genesis vehicles in stock. I started to wonder when I was exchanging emails with the salesman. I put in an inquiry online to Genesis of Bowie and got a response, and the salesman identified himself at the bottom as working at Ourseman Hyundai of Bowie. When I arrived at the dealership, there was no Genesis signage anywhere in the building. The brochures near the door were Hyundai only. It had the feeling of a scrappy mainstream high-volume dealership. At one point when I was waiting for the salesman to arrive for our appointment someone on the floor sold a car and literally every salesman in the building started ringing cowbells.
I asked the salesman, what the heck? He said that they didn't bother to put up any Genesis signs because they plan to build a Genesis facility across the road, and he pointed out a white building they plan to pull down to build the new dealership. I hope that's the case, because there is no way I would dare bring a Genesis into this facility for servicing.
I liked the car a lot. The seats felt a little hard, but they are well constructed and pretty wide, which is nice. When I came back from the drive the salesman said that they don't bother to try to match incoming cars with customers. Whatever comes in they sell. If I wanted a particular color or configuration I could let him know and he would call me if something ever came in that matched. I asked how they were pricing them these days. He replied, well above MSRP but it all depends on what the exact market price might be any given day. At that point, I walked away and said, "goodbye, nice to meet you."