In addition to being intelligent, practical, pleasant to look at and amusing to drive, the new Skoda Yeti also parks itself — which is just showing off, surely. Here’s the deal: you inform the Yeti of your desire to pull over into a given space, which the car electronically checks for size on its way past. You then select reverse and, in a move that feels at least as counter-intuitive as climbing into a shower cubicle fully clothed, you remove your hands from the wheel, depress the accelerator and let the car steer itself backwards into the gap. (You’re in charge of the brake, by the way. It’s worth bearing that in mind.) The Yeti then patiently waits for you to select first and straightens up for you.

In a family-hauling cross-breed such as the Yeti, the system can claim to be genuinely useful, and at least it is relatively sensibly set up. Devices that measure a parking space have been available for some time, but have tended to take a conservative and almost haughty view of what constitutes an adequate gap. I once trialled a Citroën that didn’t seem to want me to park in any street containing a single other car, or, for that matter, a tree. Not all of us can afford to be that choosy and eventually I stopped seeking its opinion.

The Yeti, however, is ready to give the thumbs-up to a space that is only 80cm longer than itself. This is an advance, but it’s still well short of the ideal for practical purposes. As any urban-dwelling driver will tell you, the cut and thrust of modern-day inner-city parking means that you are forced to develop the ability to park your car in a space that is, technically, 10cm too short for it.

Anyway, the price of this option is £450, which is quite a lot to pay someone to park your car for you, and I’d say that the Yeti was perfectly good without it. This vehicle is Skoda’s response to the backlash against 4x4s, which many people have decided are odious, even as they quietly lust for one. Thus the Yeti, which throws lots of perfectly acceptable hatchback cuteness into the mix, creating an all-new category of car — the stealth SUV. The Yeti’s black pillars and wraparound glass, its high ride and booted-up wheel arches, are all very aspirational, in a Land Rover Discovery kind of way, yet the whole package is no more intimidating than a big puppy with a wet nose.

It’s going to take on the Nissan Qashqai and it may win because it looks much more fun and because the quality of the cabin is so high that, if you slightly screwed up your eyes, you could almost be in an Audi.

Could it get a few shirts ironed, as one drove, or would that be too much to ask?

Skoda Yeti 2.0 TDI

Price from £13,000

Top speed 118 mph

Acceleration 0-62 in 9.9 seconds

Average consumption 46.3 mpg

CO2 emissions 159 g/km

Rating New Czech 4x4 monster is far from abominable