Renault’s future as a provider of cars that are fun to drive may be in safe hands (see story opposite), but there’s no doubt that the company’s design currency has taken a tumble of late. Three clunkers stand out: the new Laguna (improved, but still steady enough not to scare off fleet managers), the new Twingo (easily upstaged by the Fiat 500), and the imminent Koleos SUV (tediously generic).

So what happened? And will it change? At the Geneva show, Renault revealed the shape of the next Mégane, in the shape of the Mégane Coupé Concept, and while some of its features - most notably the ‘dragonfly’ doors - are clearly not destined for production, Renault’s design chief for concept cars, Stéphane Janin, confirms that this is more or less how the real Mégane Coupé will look. ‘Some elements will be there 100 per cent, some zero per cent,’ he says, ‘but 75 to 80 per cent of them are what you will see. The lines around the headlamps and the rear lamps, and the shape of the side of the car all are very close.’

So dramatic Renault design returns. Apparently its brief disappearance was because Renault supremo Carlos Ghosn, who famously doesn’t mind what a company makes as long as it’s profitable, demanded massive quality and reliability improvements that would be signalled by sober, serious shapes and an end to visual innovation which might be seen as frivolous.

It was a worthy aim, but maybe Renault overdid it. ‘We focused too much on technical points,’ says Janin. ‘We want a Renault to be an attractive, sexy car. Buyers must fall in love with it. We want to return to the time of the carrosserie, when cars were special.’

With reliability sorted out (Renault hopes), the company is recharging its creative streak. Don’t go expecting a new Avantime quite yet, though.