What could be better than driving an SUV around a field like a lunatic while PRs look on beaming as you treat one of their finest with all the respect with which one heavyweight boxer treats another at a press conference? Monster trucking and paintball guns, that’s what.

Well, strapping a remote controlled paintball gun to the front of it would be a good start, something Chevrolet decided to do on a recent launch for the new Chevy Captiva SUV.

The aim of the game was to blast a number of monster-esque targets in the heart or head for maximum points, while a co-driver threw the Captiva around like a madman, while admiring the soft off-roader’s sector-best turning circle and easy autobox. But mainly driving like a madman.

It’s a fascinating new development in car gadgetry, though we were disappointed not to find the gun among the Captiva’s optional accessories.

Elsewhere at the event was an off-road course with all manner of problems for the Captiva to tackle like a rolling road, limbo pole, smoke tunnel and minefield.

What we learned from this was that driving over mines as quickly as possible was the best way to negotiate a minefield and the Captiva is more than able to handle an off-road course as tricky as any junior kickstart trial.

Here’s motoring journo Alex Goy tackling the course with varying degrees of success that somehow resulted in a notional clear round.

Finally, was something that even the mighty Captiva would baulk at – driving over a pair of aged police cars. Luckily the Grizzly monster truck was on hand to help the assorted journos.

With wheels as big as a house and a 7.0-litre engine with more grunt that Ray Winstone, the Grizzly is one of the biggest monster trucks… (Clarkson-like pause) in the world and is capable of a mind-boggling 70mph on the motorway.

The stopping distances at that sort of speed are, frankly, inconceivable as bringing Grizzly to a halt at about one mile per hour is a task that necessitates literally standing on brakes and using every ounce of leverage inside the sparse compartment.

MotorTorque struggled with the task of bringing Grizzly to a halt with its front wheels resting on top of the police cars – and struggled even more not to bash our head of the roof when coming down the other side. Here are some other journos enjoying very differing levels of success:

Gear-changing may have proved literally impossible with only one arm – as may indicating, but hydraulic steering was fairly easy. Still, the amount of cone carnage that took place bore witness to a number of drivers used to rather smaller transport.

Now, a monster truck with paintball guns trapped to the front…