The exterior styling has enough off-road cues to evoke the spirit of the Defender or even a Toyota Land Cruiser. Inside, the cabin materials are well chosen, with a chunky, rugged feel and layout to the dashboard that you simply don’t get in any of the brand’s other models.

Visibility is good, with a steeply raked windscreen and squared-off corners that make it easy to judge where the 5 starts and stops. The dashboard itself is perhaps a little button heavy, but the switches are all of a sensible quality and everything feels solid – particularly the grab handles at either edge of the fascia and centre console. They can come in handy when you’re hauling yourself up into the front seats.

It’s soon evident that, much like the U8 that we tried in the UK a few months back, the Fangchengbao 5 does not feel as fast as its power figures suggest. You can flick a switch on the centre console to move between the pure-electric and hybrid modes, which lets the car decide when it needs to mix EV and petrol power. But even with this engaged, the acceleration doesn’t feel as impressive as the quoted sub-five-second 0-62mph time. It’s perhaps the first sign that we’re dealing here with a 4×4-focused vehicle, complete with a kerbweight that’s said to be around 2.9 tonnes.

Further, more conclusive evidence of this is delivered at the first corner of BYD’s test circuit, where the Fangchengbao 5 demonstrates instantly that it doesn’t like to be rushed. There’s a fair amount of pitch under braking and acceleration, and the soft suspension allows a considerable amount of body roll. In our case, the front tyres had long since given up by this point and were skating across the road surface, inducing pretty chronic understeer.