Mercedes-Benz G580 review

Welcome to your spin class. The car park pirouette is indeed the party piece du jour for electric SUVs. Who’d have thought that, when Professor Larry Burns and Christopher Borroni-Bird introduced GM’s AUTOnomy concept in 2002, it would come to this?

Back then, the General’s autonomous, hydrogen fuel-cell-powered skateboard-based concept also had individual wheel motors. It posited self-driving, four-wheel steering, brakeless torque vectoring, green hydrogen power – a brave new world, perhaps?

Instead, those wheel motors have given us a series of monstrous SUVs, which at the press of a series of buttons, can dig a foundation for a glamping yurt or missile silo in your garden.

Are we really that superficial and shallow? It appears we are.