The label "C5" stands out very proudly on the boot of Citroën's new saloon. Of course, the last vehicle to be named a C5 was Sir Clive Sinclair's battery-driven bike and one may not thank Citroën for bringing back to mind images of almost prone motorists pottering haplessly into the middle of busy intersections with nothing more to protect them than an elongated perspex bucket.
I never went in one of Sir Clive's C5s, but I'm prepared to stick my neck out and maintain that the Citroën version is stronger, broader and faster. I also reckon it will sell more, but perhaps we should wait and see on that.
The car is certainly up against it in the battle for customers. The C5's rivals in what's known as the "upper-medium sector" (which is to say saloons for executives, but not for chairmen) are the Ford Mondeo, the VW Passat and the Renault Laguna. These are all, with good reason, award-winning cars. It's like being pitched in with Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool, week in week out. Is the best the C5 can hope for at this level a place in the UEFA Cup? Is this the Leicester City of saloon cars?
Citroën are clearly thinking more big league than that and, aware perhaps that the C5 is not the most beautiful object on the road (indeed, one has seen more beautiful road signs), they are investing their hopes in the car's unique futurism. We're meant, I think, to understand that, though the Mondeo and the Laguna have the edge when it comes to style and the Passat has the edge when it comes to looking like an Audi, all of them are, by comparison with the C5, products of the dim and distant 20th century.
Easier, perhaps, to sell a pretty car than a technological miracle, but Citroën are giving it a shot. The C5 is, for instance, one of the first cars to highlight its internal wiring system as a buying point: the "multiplex wiring" (nothing to do with cinemas), which enables the headlights and windscreen wipers to come on automatically and the windows to be operated by remote control, is the third thing Citroën mention about the car. The second thing they mention is the "advanced Direct Injection engines" and the first is the "Hydractive 3 suspension".
Even more than it was for Brunel, suspension has always been a Citroën fad. They are the great suspenders. You may recall the tremendous bateau-shaped Citroëns of old that would take a moment to rise up off the ground after their ignitions were switched on.
The 21st-century version of this is the Hydractive 3 system, which automatically lowers the car's height at motorway speeds and lifts it up high when the going gets bumpy - on farm tracks, for instance, or on most A-roads as they approach London. People with more sensitive backsides than mine may differ, but I cannot confidently say that the ride was gloriously more luxurious than in a Passat, Mondeo or Laguna, which don't go up and down.
I drove two versions of the C5 - firstly, the 2.2 HDi diesel, which comes with a new particulate filter that reduces particle emissions to a level "so low as to be almost unmeasurable". In addition, the engine is so frugal that a single tank of petrol could probably be made to last you a year and a half, as long as you never went above 35mph and accelerated very carefully. In as much as any four-door saloon car that does up to 126mph can be, the C5 with a 2.2 diesel engine is clearly a green choice. George Bush would hate it.
I then drove the V6 automatic, which needs refuelling every 10 minutes or so, doesn't filter its particles nearly as conscientiously and indeed guffs out almost a third as much again in terms of carbon dioxide. That said, it has the considerable advantage over the diesel model of not being a diesel model, and therefore not sounding like one.
I guess it will come down to the individual conscience in the end: how much can you make your fondness for the polar ice caps weigh against your desire to own a car that doesn't rattle like a lorry carrying a loose load of beer kegs? Tough call.
The interior, though unstartling, is generously decked with comforts. You can show films on the colour satellite navigation screen, though it is, of course, not recommended that you watch them while driving.
In a heroic resistance to trends elsewhere, there are no drinks holders, presumably because the car is French and French people are not so vulgar that they need to drink on the move. However, I did manage to wedge a chocolate milkshake into the ashtray, located, ostensibly for passengers in the rear, at the end of the central reservation containing the handbrake and gearstick.
And without any spillage, either, despite a journey which was at times winding and lumpy, as travel through south London increasingly is. Doubtless the Hydractive 3 system must take the credit for that smoothness, but I like to think the multiplex wiring played a part as well.
The lowdown
Citroën C5 2.2 HDi
Price: from £18,690
Top speed: 127mph
Acceleration: 0-62 in 10.2 seconds
Consumption: 44.1 mpg combined
At the wheel: Norma Waterson
On the stereo: Clannad
En route for: Cropreddy Festival
