Why we still fly around the world just to drive in circles

Convening many cars and people in one place is about as efficient as launches get

When The Beautiful South wrote their song Rotterdam (Or Anywhere), they could have been writing about the itinerant life of a road tester.
Motoring hacks travel to locations that serve a particular purpose: to drive around in big circles. And then we go home. To the outsider looking in, I can well appreciate that you might wonder why it’s done quite so.
The motoring press calls these events launches, although others might well describe them as junkets of a sort. A new model comes along and so many demonstrators are arrayed outside a generously sized hotel for us hacks to test and review – while benefiting from the hospitality of the manufacturer, to a greater or lesser extent, in order to do it.
Over days and weeks, different groups from different countries are flown in in orderly daily rotations. A press conference and a product briefing, a formal dinner and interviews with company executives are sche