Sparky, thrusting, technically sophisticated, easy on the eye - if these are not words one has tended to associate immediately with the Nissan Primera, it is mostly because one has been, for the most part, too busy using other words, such as cheap, made in Sunderland and minicab.
Yet here's the all-new model with its flowing body-lines and its cargo of carefully selected, leading-edge driving aids, looking almost as pleased with itself as Robbie Williams does. And to drive, it has that quiet, don't-let-me-trouble-you, well-sprung feel familiar from cars several leagues and many thousands of pounds above it. We are witnesses here to a major breakthrough in our time: the world's first remotely covetable Nissan saloon.
How go-ahead is the new Primera? Well, put it this way: you climb in and look for the instrument panel directly in front of you where it usually is, and... no instrument panel.
The clocks are mounted centrally in a little alcove above the dashboard. Nissan maintains that this radical resiting of the speedo is based on a series of complex ergonomic calculations relating to the driver's eyeline and posture. If I'm understanding the science correctly, casting a glance slightly to your left, rather than down in front of you, is better for your eyes, neck and, in all likelihood, your hamstrings, while improving your breathing, and thus the flow of freshly oxygenated blood to your brain.
All of which may be true, though the effect one appreciates more immediately is how invigoratingly clutterless the car feels without dials and switches chivvying for your attention through the gaps in the steering wheel. The coolly pared-down theme continues under the clocks in the dashboard's central pillar. Here, instead of the usual bank of buttons and switches with daft pictures on them, there is a seven-inch screen and a kind of computer keyboard.
This "ergonomically located central concentration switch" may sound gimmicky, but in practice it's the opposite. In the Fiat Stilo (which, like the Primera, is being marketed chiefly as a box of electrical innovations), the technology seems to have been sent to clog things up. In the Primera it's sent to make life simpler. Nissan reckon the Primera has 50% fewer buttons than any of its rivals. Given the high incidence of button fetishism among new car buyers, that declaration could actually lose Nissan sales. But all the more power to them for making it.
The screen will, of course, serve you with a satellite navigation map - a particularly exciting one, too, offering a bird's-eye view, with the map receding off into the distance and with a 2cm strip of blue sky across the top. Rather than driving to your destination, it looks as if you're flying in to bomb it.
This, though, is not the best thing about the screen. That happens when you put the car in reverse: the camera mounted above the rear bumper clicks on and the screen fills with a gritty but clear picture of what lies directly behind you. Nissan are, understandably, thrilled with this device. Some adverts for the Primera show only the screen in action, with the logo: "You'll never look back." What's been edited out of that image is the warning strip at the foot of the screen, urging you to check behind you before attempting any reversing procedure.
In other words, you will look back, almost as much as you did before. But for those final, buttock-clenching moments while backing into a tight parking space, the screen is an invaluable help. Plus, with the current fad for surveillance television, Nissan may well strike a popular nerve here. It's a little slice of Big Brother in your car - your chance to park up and watch the world go by your boot.
You may be concerned to know that the car does go forwards, too. Very smoothly and dependably. But sadly, no televisual images of this are available. We await the next generation of Nissans. In the meantime, there's always the windscreen.
