Turning right on to the main road, I fed the power in gently and then sat, amazed and amused, winding on more and more opposite lock as I slithered across the road and into the correct lane at about 3mph. It was like full-on driving in slow mo - I don't think I've been so sideways for so long and travelled so few yards. Even pointing straight there was limited traction, and it took a light throttle and short-shifting up through the gears to get up to a modest speed. Ideas I'd had about going home the long way, down the lanes to avoid the inevitable jams, were forgotten.

I mentioned tyre wear in the last running report and now, with the 10,000-mile mark breached, I'm still impressed that the Michelins are standing up well - there's plenty of meat left on each corner. It seems that the engineers who created the second-generation Clio V6 have extracted a great deal more stability, poise and precision from the chassis without asking the tyres to pay for it. It's not a car you hang the tail out in; its ability is all delivered before the rear tyres start sliding. The couple of times I've provoked power oversteer - at low speed on wet roundabouts - it has felt clumsy and slow.

After a blistering start that saw more than 4000 miles added in just a few weeks, the mileage accumulation has slowed down, with just over 1000 being added last month. The first service is still a little way off at 12,000 miles, and there will be little beyond normal service items to be looked at. The only rattle so far has been traced to a loose Zeus clip on the inner engine cover. At about 3500 miles, on eCOTY 2003 in Italy (063), the on-board monitoring system flagged up a need for oil and we added a litre. That took about 10 minutes under the neon lights of the filling station, removing the two engine covers, leaning in over the seats to get better access to the filler and threading and re-threading the dipstick. It has proved to be a running-in thirst: in the last 7500 miles it's used barely a drop.

I've yet to see another Clio V6 on the road but if you've got one I'd like to hear about your experiences. You can email us about any car we run at fastfleet@evo.co.uk