Probably not. Position of the antenna relative to the ground plane alters the radiation pattern. That’s why you’ll see police cruisers mount their antennas dead center on the roof—it creates an omnidirectional pattern. Mounting it to one side or another causes the field to radiate more in the direction with more roof in front of it (kind of the opposite of intuition). So the remote in your hand still likely interacts with your body, but not in a controlled or desirable way.
The ground plane is typically orthogonal to the antenna. Both TX and Rx antennae will have their own 'effevtive' ground plane relative to each other at any give point in time that will effect their Tx/Rx capabilities. Add into that, parking lots are full of metal objects and typically nearby large buildings. Those, also, will change the propagation characteristics of the general environment.
There's a lot at play in open-air environments. This does seem quite easy for DIY experiments using RTL-SDRs in varying environments.