Only Yang once

IT TURNS LIKE TANK BUT IT’S NOT FOR ME

This is the second wackiest vehicle I’ve ever driven – the first being a 10ft tall shopping trolley powered by a 7.5-litre Chevrolet V8 hot rod engine (the driver sat in the basket).

This Yangwang U8, on the other hand, can float for 30 minutes and drive itself out of any lake or river you’ve carelessly driven it into.

You do, however, have to then visit the dealer to get the fish hosed out and other remedial attentions dealt with. The U8 also has the ability to turn within its own length like a tank – handy if your satnav has sent you down a dead end and there’s no room to do a three-point turn.

In order to explain how it does this we will have a look under the Yangwang’s massive body.

The U8, which looks a lot like a Land Rover Defender on steroids, is technically a hybrid that features a range extender.

There’s a 2.0-litre four-cylinder petrol engine that never drives the wheels but instead powers a generator to charge a 49.1kwh battery. This battery sends power to four individual electric motors that each move a wheel. The U8 does these tank turns with the wheels on one side of the vehicle turning in the opposite direction to those on the other.

It works, but tyre wear will be horrific if you make a habit of doing this party trick.the range extender is almost essential because the car’s batteries (if it was a pure EV) would weigh so much. As it is the U8 clocks in at 3,460kg.

Yangwang is BYD’S posh brand but it’s not yet known if it will come to Europe let alone the UK. The company must be thinking about it otherwise why bring four of them here? They couldn’t be registered for road use so we drove the U8 at Goodwood racing circuit.

Those four electric motors together generate a massive 1,180bhp which makes the U8 the most powerful car I’ve ever driven, and that includes racing cars.

However, when you actually drive the thing, particularly on the open expanses of Goodwood’s circuit, it doesn’t feel that powerful. That’s because it’s power to weight ratio is only 341bhp/tonne or about the same as a decent Caterham sports motor. The car also feels totally out of its depth on the track, its mass hard to tame, with the various electronic stability systems working overtime. An interesting but not particularly rewarding experience.

The interior is exceptionally spacious as you’d hope in such a monstrous car, and there is real leather and wood to be seen everywhere.

Plenty of screens, too, of course. Clearly BYD via Yangwang is trying to channel some Bentley vibes here. Unfortunately, the material quality

and fit and finish is not quite up to those standards.

Very good effort though.

The Yangwang U8 is a good laugh and shows what the company can do, but I’d recommend that the car stays in China. It’s too big for European roads and sends a poor message when BYD itself is flagging up its environmental credentials.

With its price of around £120,000, I very much doubt there’s a market for it here anyway.