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The back is the only place where the designers may have overdosed on the futurism shtick. There are way too many surfaces that demand your visual attention, from a double-step rear windscreen that does away with the need for a rear wiper, to the series of triangular forms that bounce light back at you in new and startling ways.

It's just that it doesn't need quite so many of them. Even the exhausts, on all models, are a pair of isosceles triangles sunk into the rear bumper.

It goes from clean and minimal at the front, to crazy and, it has to be said, faintly 80s at the back. Like it went too fast down the styling wind tunnel and all the extra surfaces migrated backwards out of the flow.

It certainly gets plenty of attention, though. The French seem to be obsessed by it, stopping in lay-bys for a good paw, half-heartedly chasing it around the city centre, and generally giving it the thumbs-up.

At least, that's what it looked like they were doing. It stands way, way out. In this part of the market - the megabucks family hatch market - that's a brave move.

Thankfully, the car's new suit comes with some underwear, and the engineers have taken advantage of the thrusting new attitude to plonk some life into the hatch's trousers.

The new Civic certainly hasn't been sorted for the over-sixties' potter-and-a-pork-pie. It's stiff, not particularly comfy and almost, but not quite, as desperately crashy as early Honda Jazz and Civics. But it's a close call.

The roads we've managed to find here in the southern French mountain ranges are as close to British as we can find, if not marginally worse, and the Civic is vibrating. If it was a Type-R, maybe I wouldn't have been quite so surprised, but it's not, and I am.

It helps that the steering is light but accurate, responding more to a wrist-roll than an arm-twirl, prescribing predictable arcs and giving the Civic a twinkle-toed and nimble feel despite the shimmying - especially because the deep-dished wheel is small in diameter and extremely comfy to hold.

You gather lots of subconscious data through your palms and arms, and it's something the Civic tries very hard to translate accurately. It's a good counterpoint to the stiff ride - taking the edges off the blurry eyesight.