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I have a long-term and sentimental love of big Citroens. I'm not blind to their faults, but I'm certainly more inclined than some to let certain aspects of their behaviour pass as eccentric, where others would call them failings.

And the C6 is another in the same line. It happens to feel a lot better built than any before, so that's the main criticism out of the way, but with the best will in the world, I still can't say the C6 is the best big car out there.

But come on, just look at the thing. Climb in the back and feel the amazing comfort. Let's set off down this street absolutely full of sleeping policemen and potholes, and feel the almost magical way it glides over them.

Even if it isn't an exceptionally good car, you can easily argue that it's a great one and, what's more, a truly fascinating alternative to those hordes of A6s and 5-Series. You can go on all you like about oleopneumatic suspension (and trust me, friends, I will), but no discussion of this car can start anywhere else but in its design, both outside and in.

You can take those long, sleek curves and extrapolate them through to the 1974 CX and on back to the 1955 DS. The shape might be modern, but it maintains a healthy respect for history, because that's how France works.

French design, automotive and otherwise, has a continuous and largely uninterrupted history. Philippe Starck isn't omnipresent in modern French design just for spikiness and pure irony. Even when he's being ironic, he still respects history. Look at his famous Louis Ghost chair.

It's smooth, clean and transparent, revealing its structure, and as a by-product celebrates the advanced plastic moulding technology that produces it. However, the basic outline is a knowing, if slightly sly wink to Versailles and Louis Quatorze.

Modern German automotive design differs from French because it exists in something of a vacuum. Before WW2, the Germans led the planet in product design, and Bauhaus was the first move-ment to make art indivisible from design and technology. The trauma of Nazism ended all that. In fact, beyond Dieter Rams' work for Braun, German product design never quite recovered.

Which means German car design has few references beyond other German car design. French cars refer to other French objects, and French designers in general don't really feel the need to make any concessions beyond their national bubble.

French culture as a whole doesn't, I guess. Our C6 got surrounded in Paris by protesters waving banners against the Anglo-American model of liberalised employment and trade.