It’s just an innocent turning off a quiet country road. Single-track, an ugly, plummeting ribbon of scarred bitumen with enough evil cambers to show disregard for any EU road-building directive.

The surface varies in height by a foot: two troughs worn by the passage of a thousand tractors. Add in cheering fans and blistering heat, and if it wasn’t for the verdant landscape in my peripheral vision, this could be a stretch of the Tour de Corse rally.

Surely the Citroën C2 VTS’s nose will scrape the tarmac with the ‘skkkershh’ of a WRC car’s grounding front splitter? It doesn’t. The little Citroën jiggles furiously but tightly, purposefully. No noise, no shards of sump in the rear-view mirror. Now I’m on a great line for a fast right over a bridge: clear exit, soft verge, gravel, temptation. Easy right over crest – cut maybe. I’ve never had an ‘easy right over crest – cut maybe’ moment in a C2 VTR. Has anyone?

Autocar doesn’t like the C2 VTR. Too many of us here have enough memories – not to mention crumpled service invoices and old MoTs – of previous Peugeot-Citroën hot hatch classics to fall for a ‘yoof market’ special that’s slow, hobbled by an atrocious gearbox and a chassis of limited ability.

Despite initial denials, however, the C2 has spawned a hotter model in the mould of the old Saxo VTS with which it shares its name, and the UK gets it first.