CitroΫn builds a Mini rival. CitroΫn creates an upmarket sub-brand and banishes the indignity of discounting to the history bin. CitroΫn exhumes the DS letters from a more sanitary part of that bin while declaring itself anti-retro (confusing, that one). CitroΫn makes a car said to be a genuine riot to drive even though the Peugeot 207 GTI, a car with seemingly similar genes, is a duffer. There’s a lot that the new CitroΫn DS3 has to do.

The visual chic, the ability to customise the sharply shaped hatchback with all manner of arty decals and chrome bits, the obvious quality of the interior furniture, all of these are important to the DS3’s mission in the marketplace. For many buyers they will be enough, just as they are with the Mini. But we at evo clearly crave something a lot deeper than that. On this car, frankly, hinges the credibility of the entire Peugeot-CitroΫn edifice of chassis dynamics expertise. Our own Mr Harris hit the nail on the head with his recent column on PSA’s lost mojo here. This is last-chance time, mes amis.

I’m not going to build up the story to a climax. I’m going to blow it right now, and set myself up for ridicule should what I have learnt in France not survive translation to the UK. This is one terrific little car. It handles and rides. Accelerates with real gusto. Steers as a rapid hatch should. It works. Renault can no longer claim sole ownership of fast French flair.

I got a good feeling about the DS3 as I talked with project leader Thierry Blanchard prior to my first drive. My starting points were fond memories of the ultra-interactive Saxo VTS and 106 GTI, and the combination of glutinous, rubbery, artificially heavy steering and constricted ride that ruin recent rapid Peugeots. M Blanchard understood completely. This will be like a more grown-up Saxo VTS, he said, able to cope with the mandatory Euro NCAP slalom test while retaining the pointability he likes and we like. The ESP will be fully switchable. The steering will be precise, with a credible feel of what the wheels are doing. The ride will be taut but dual layers of rubber in the rear torsion beam’s mountings, a soft layer and a hard layer, will damp out harshness without creating imprecision.

Good words. Will there be versions with more power than the current top model’s 154bhp? A 200bhp engine, perhaps? (It’s fundamentally the same turbocharged 1.6-litre engine as a Mini Cooper S, after all.) Yes, came the reply, and the DS3 will also have a WRC career soon. ‘But do you think 200bhp is enough?’ Blanchard asked.

So this morning I select a white DS3 with a black roof and door mirrors, raspberry-coloured leather and a glossy black dash panel. You have to go through this process; it’s part of the car’s reason to be. Colour, trim, chromework and wheels are almost infinitely variable, and the graphic add-ons deliberately avoid motoring iconography. It has the 154bhp engine and six-speed ’box, of course.

It looks great, although you must remember that the full leather, the two-tone paint, some chrome, the ‘My Way’ sat-nav (thanks, Frank, especially for the speed-camera warnings) and auto air-con are options over this DSport model’s £15,900 list price. (The usual other PSA/Mini engines are also available.) The bonnet, front wings, headlights and windscreen are shared with the also-new C3, as is the basic dashboard, but you’d hardly notice.

It takes maybe 400 yards to know that Blanchard wasn’t bluffing. Lightly crumbling Parisian streets are felt but smoothed-off with no choppiness. Minimal lag and a crisply metered head of torque squirt the DS3 through chicanes of traffic, a discreetly deep exhaust note providing the accompaniment. On the open road the gearshift proves massively more precise than PSA’s recent springy offerings, and the torque combined with turbine revability fling the DS3 along with rather less effort than a Clio 200 demands.

Now some properly twisty roads and the reckoning that goes with them. The DS3 turns in keenly and precisely, and crucially you can feel the grip at the front and fine-tune the rate of turn even when the front wheels are well loaded up. It helps that the driving position is just right, the steering wheel pleasant to hold.

There’s a neat degree of flickability if you lift off into a tightening turn, a gentler yaw build-up than PSA’s fast hatches once generated but still enough to bring the tail alive. That magic combination of fluence and precision that used to be the Peugeot-CitroΫn hallmark has been reincarnated, it seems, and the Bollinger should be broken out. This bodes well for the Peugeot RCZ, assuming the two brands’ engineers share their knowledge.

One possible worry remains. Might some consider the DS3 too girly? I couldn’t care less, personally; besides, you can make a DS3 look pretty macho if you want to. Would I have one over the harder-riding, more cramped, more obvious Mini? Yes, I would.