25 Aug 06
Like many people, I often wonder what qualifies as the most pointless thing I've ever done. A complete lap of the M25, starting and stopping in exactly the same place, might seem a good starting point. But even within the already pretty pointless genre of driving round in circles, I've done more pointless things than that: with a few chums I once took a diesel-powered Chrysler minivan to the Nardo test track and drove it round in circles at 112mph for 24 hours.
I've hung out of the passenger window of a Mini while it was driven on two wheels, and built a Caterham so badly Caterham had to build it again. I've even raced Noel Edmonds across his front lawn in a motorised wheelie bin. But as I sat in the pitlane at Donington in this Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT-8 I wondered if the next few moments were not going to cap it all.
Driving an off-roader on a race track is a scarcely more silly concept than driving a race car off-road. With its high weight and even higher centre of gravity, an SUV is as suited to the circuit environment as a Friesian is to scuba diving. But even that was not what was really bothering me. Anyone with a mind to check out the long-term test file will discover that, ever since getting an SUV, I've become more than a mite troubled by their sheer profligacy, be it measured in avoirdupois, unutilised interior space or untapped off-road ability.
