A LITTLE while ago, Mr Hughes and I landed on the Mediterranean island that gave rise to a certain M. Bonaparte, some old French bloke with… erm… a Napoleon complex, who enjoyed a spot of warmongering and land acquisition (under extreme duress). But we weren’t on Corsica to drink in the historic richness of the place; instead we were testing a performance Renault Laguna.

    Now, if the coupling of the words ‘performance’ and ‘Laguna’ sounds like an oxymoron to you, then may I just politely refresh your memory with Alain Menu’s all-conquering 1997 BTCC weapon? True, it’s unlikely you have managed to pick up one of these blue-and-yellow Williams-fettled monsters on the cheap from ‘Autotrader’, but the Laguna has genuine motorsport heritage – not something a Passat could lay claim to, for instance.

    And so we drove the 2-litre turbo Laguna GT 205 and its diesel sibling 180 dCi on the winding roads near Porto-Vecchio, and loved them. No, seriously – both petrol and diesel were fantastic. Not because of their power, because even the 2.0T’s 205bhp is not a great deal in this day and age (although, as Gez pointed out, 204 turbocharged horses in a souped-up family car was considered amazing when the car in question was a Ford Sierra…), but because of four-wheel-steer.

    This arrangement of rear wheels directionally aiding the fronts has never quite taken off. The Japanese flirted with it for a long time, on motors like the Mitsubishi GTO, Nissan 300ZX and even the Skyline, and I actually owned a fourth-gen Prelude with Honda’s set-up. From my owner’s perspective it worked OK, but overall 4WS was not the technical marvel most people expected, whether it was an active or passive system.

This view is conventional Laguna, but from the rear and side, it does answer the question: what would a FWD Aston Martin look like?

Even experienced French car owners will be surprised at how the Laguna Coupé nonchalantly deals with corners. It's huge fun.

    Renault’s decision to stick it on the Laguna in 2008 seemed to come from nowhere, then, but in operation it actually worked. Very well, in fact. The Laguna GT resisted understeer and gripped like the proverbial littoral mollusc at cornering speeds that would have seen a conventional front-steer Laguna III sailing into the Corsican scenery in a fiery leap of doom. It actually reduced myself and Gez to helpless laughter in some of the tighter bends, which was probably our nervous cathartic response to evading what should have been certain death on vertiginous French roads.

     On the launch, Renault announced that the four-cylinder GT models were the Laguna range-toppers until the two 3-litre V6s – again, one petrol, one diesel – arrived, and now they’re finally here. And, in this case, we got to drive the derv-drinker in Coupé format. This is a handsome two-door GT version (with 4WS, like its hatch and tourer brethren), with a rear end that bears more than a passing resemblance to a certain Gaydon-built brand of British supercars, and the slightly-surprised-looking face of all Laguna IIIs. Overall, though, it’s handsome and well-equipped inside and out, and 332lb ft of torque should get anyone’s dander up. The BMW 4.4 V8 of a few years ago could only manage as much flexibility as this, which is a mark of the Diamond’s progress.

    The question is, though, can the Laguna Coupé GT perform like the Clio Cup, Megane R26 and Twingo 133, all of which are cementing Renault’s place in the Valhalla of Good Chassis Dynamics?