  In this paper we study the nilpotent 2-step, corank 2 sub-Riemannian metrics
that are nilpotent approximations of general sub-Riemannian metrics. We exhibit
optimal syntheses for these problems. It turns out that in general the cut time
is not equal to the first conjugate time but has a simple explicit expression.
As a byproduct of this study we get some smoothness properties of the spherical
Hausdorff measure in the case of a generic 6 dimensional, 2-step corank 2
sub-Riemannian metric.
