When coming to Santa Monica beach a few days ago after a drive down from San Francisco, seeing a Volvo test squad (or rather their cars) in a parking lot was not a sight I expected! I first reacted to the new (and already fairly common) XC90, parked next to the far less common S90, then to the giant screens on the passenger seats of both cars and then obviously to the covered one in between. It didn’t take much to figure out that this is the upcoming small SUV XC40, but unfortunately the cover was really well fixated so this is all you get to see. Still haven’t figured out what kind of test you conduct on a parking in Santa Monica beach, but I guess test drivers need to go for a swim every now and then as well…
The Thrill of Driving 
Funny. In the late 1990’s I was also in California on holiday and saw the (then) new E46 BMW at in In&Out burger bar… I approached then and said “Hey that is the new BMW 3 Series…” to which they said “lets get out of here” and got in their cars and left…
So it seems car testers still test in California and that most of the locals are still too preoccupied with burgers / instagram / facebook / blogging site to notice the latest out of Europe… Americas think they are 20 years ahead but in reality they are at least 6 hours behind!
Indeed – thanks for your comment Percy!