Hybrid vehicles are all the rage: the coupe which is, in fact, a people carrier if you put the seats down and lift the roof up; the hatchback with off-road capability and a pen for sheep; the executive saloon which doubles as a snow-plough - they're all out there somewhere or doubtless soon will be.
Now here's the Ford Fusion, whose very name announces it to be a jazzy blend of disparate elements. What is the Fusion a fusion of? Well, it's an ostensibly ambitious melding of a small car with a big car. It's a meeting at great temperature between a city runabout and an army Jeep. Or, to put it another way, it's a hatchback which has had most of the suburban whimsy knocked out of it by being slammed into the mould for a sports utility vehicle.
It's an armoured Ford Fiesta, then. And it's what a VW Golf would look like if you invited "Stormin" Norman Schwarzkopf on to the design panel. Except he would want it to be bomb proof and my own nagging feeling, after a few days in a Fusion, is that it might not even be entirely bike proof. But we'll get on to that later.
The chief gimmick, perhaps even the sole robust selling point of the Fusion, is the height of its driving position. Our generation has discovered the pleasure, previously available only to lorry drivers and helicopter pilots, of an elevated view of the road. The reasons so many people currently drive their children to school and bring their dry cleaning home in thumping great 4x4s include, obviously, rank competitiveness and deep insecurity about both road safety and social standing.
But the appeal of those cars is also substantially connected with the height of the driving position, and the feelings of safety and control which follow from being able to take a more panoramic view of the road and the dry cleaners than you could in your old Citroen 2CV.
Up there where the air is rarified, a driver finds a degree of calm unknown to those in lower cars who are obliged to stare blindly into his exhaust pipe. Little wonder that our cars approach closer and closer to the condition of double-decker buses. And little wonder that the Ford Fusion has been squeezed hard in the factory to make it taller.
That said, could one not contrive this effect without going to all the trouble and expense of buying a completely new car? Could one not, in fact, clean up by creating and marketing an adult version of the booster seat?
Well, perhaps, although in order to sit this high in a Fiesta, you'd need to put six cushions or an orange crate on top of your seat - by which point, of course, your forehead would be flat against the windscreen, halfway down, and you would be steering with your knees. It's worth a go, I guess, but perhaps not when the police are around.
Having seen the ads and read the bumpf, my main disappointment about the Fusion was that it didn't seem, given the fanfare, all that high off the road. But it's certainly a step up from the Fiesta. And Ford sound very proud of the way you can see both front corners of the car from behind the wheel without standing up, which enables you to wrestle the car through the streets with a confidence denied to those whose bonnets slope out of view.
But these days there are plenty of Land Rover-inspired vehicles from which, even in Peterborough, you can just about make out Moscow on the horizon, never mind your own bonnet. So, in the broader, height-related context, the Fusion doesn't seem to be trying very hard.
It's certainly a direct and unfussy car to drive, though, and comes at a direct and unfussy price, which is always Ford's biggest bargaining chip.
Fusions come in three different trim levels, numbered, in ascending order of poshness: one, two and three. One means you're winding the windows yourself; three means there is a button to do it for you. One means cheap seats; three means plush, and so on. We applaud Ford for the stark simplicity of this and for refusing to go with the general flow and give their individual stylings confusing, pretentious and apparently random names, like Pumice, Transept and Tabular.
I drove a Fusion 2, which meant I did get CFC-free air-conditioning, but I didn't get a "leather-covered gear knob with satin aluminium insert", nor a "courtesy light with theatre style dimming", which I think I would have enjoyed. Certainly anything theatrical would have been welcome to break the mild tedium, though in some respects the car is pure theatre.
The pedals and switches and the sound of the 1.4 engine - which has a vague but disconcerting top note of vacuum cleaner about it - are a reminder that one is driving something doing an impression of a chunky car without actually being chunky. You can fatten the wheel arches as much as you like but when the doors close with a noise dimly reminiscent of clashing saucepan lids, the sense of security somewhat dissipates, and with it one's loftiness.
The lowdown
Ford Fusion 1.4
Price: from £9,995
Top speed: 101mph
Acceleration: 0-62 in 13.7 seconds
Consumption: 43.5mpg
At the wheel: Penny Smith
On the stereo: Jonathan Ross
En route for: Sketchley 's
