Brooklands is steeped in motoring history. Its clubhouse and museum hark back to the golden age of racing and the track itself, opened in 1907, is regarded as the birthplace of British motor sport. Next summer the site will also become the birthplace of a new type of car dealer.

DaimlerChrysler, the owner of Mercedes-Benz, has bought the 159-acre site and is in the final stages of building the world’s first mega-dealership.

Set in the Surrey commuter belt — one of the richest areas in Britain — and billed as the Heritage and Technology Centre, the complex will feature a huge showroom, a museum, five-star hotel and crèche as well as three test tracks and a cinema showing films of Mercedes cars in action.

It is one of three super-showrooms planned by Mercedes that looks set to revolutionise the way we buy cars, in the same way that out-of-town shopping centres such as Lakeside in Essex and Bluewater in Kent have changed the face of high street retail.

“We will be able to have 100 cars on display as opposed to half a dozen that we have in a showroom,” says Dermot Kelly, the managing director of Mercedes Car Group in the UK. “It will enable us to exhibit cars in a way that you can’t recreate in a normal environment. There will be more colours, options and body styles on display than you could ever see in a normal dealer.”

Mercedes has lavished £45m on the project, which is just down the road from the McLaren technology centre where the Mercedes SLR McLaren road car is built. The main building will cover 725,000 sq ft and include exhibition space for 250 people, a 120-seat cinema and six simulators that can recreate being in a Formula One car going round Silverstone.

Not only will customers be able to see the cars and learn how they are made, they will also be able to try them out on a test track and off-road course before they buy them.

The centre also boasts a wet circuit with a ceramic tile surface enabling potential customers, with the help of a qualified instructor, to learn how functions such as antilock braking systems and electronic stabilisation programs work.

Useful, educational and spectacular this all may be, but the ultimate aim of the centre is more hard-nosed — to ensure that the customer buys a car and to burnish the reputation of a manufacturer that appears to have lost its way of late.

To do this the company talks about creating a "brand experience" to encourage people to feel part of the Mercedes family, and it is no coincidence that it chose Brooklands as the site for its mega-dealership. Before they merged, Mercedes and Benz cars were in the first race at Brooklands in 1907 and set a land-speed record there in 1909. It is a rich seam of nostalgia and glamour that Mercedes is happy to mine but the centre is just the beginning: two more mega-dealerships are planned for Manchester and Birmingham.

"In today’s saturated and competitive market, where all cars are very good, car makers need to find new ways of making people buy their cars," says Nigel Wonnacott from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. "Mercedes is using the wow factor. This is the history of the product, this is the product in action and — by the way — you can test it on this track. It could well be the future of motor sales."

The idea of "brand experience" has already spread to Mercedes’ main rival. BMW currently has a tie-up with the Rockingham race circuit in Northampton, where owners of BMWs and prospective owners can test out various BMW models on the track. It is a long way from the sophistication of the Brooklands venture but the trend is unmistakable.

"You buy into a brand because you are using the product rather than simply seeing it," says Wonnacott. " In the case of Brooklands, Mercedes wants the customer to go away with a warm feeling of being part of a family and the three-pointed star emblazoned on their soul."