The package of advertising documents that accompanied my new Renault Modus contained the normal sheaf of optimistic publicity photographs designed to show the car in a flattering light - poised above Rome, in this case, and surrounded by a small posse of handsome young adults, who appeared to have made room in their busy schedule of windsurfing and uncomplicated sex in order to stand in the vicinity of the car and laugh happily.

Unusually, however, there was also a photograph of the car being driven smack into a wall by two bald idiots. The bonnet of the Modus was wildly crimped by the impact and almost vertical. The windscreen was in the process of leaving the car as powder. Shards of amber plastic from the indicator housing swarmed in the air like insects. The picture left no room for doubt: when those crash-test dummies harm a car, it stays harmed.

Car manufacturers rarely celebrate their car's performance in crash tests by issuing commemorative full-colour 6in x 8in glossy prints of the occasion. Still more rarely is a baby crash-test dummy visible in those prints, through the rear side-window, gamely enduring the impact. The companies assume, probably correctly, that we are more interested in seeing how the car looks when Italian sunlight catches its hubcaps than how it looks when it ploughs head first into a solid object at 30mph with one of your children in the back.

But then, as far as Renault are concerned, a factory-controlled bender in a Modus is an occasion worth marking and remembering. For in the new Modus, they have created the first small car ever to achieve a coveted five-star rating in the Euro NCAP tests for car safety, which are, as it were, the Michelin awards for paranoid drivers.

Until now, five-star ratings have only been obtained by bigger cars, with more scope for padding. Indeed, a record-breaking six other cars in the Renault range are five-star safety generals. A high degree of protection in a little, nuggety, bossed-about supermini is an altogether harder thing to pull off, there being considerably less car to crush in the first place.

Hence Renault's strikingly graphic pride in the Modus and the uncannily sterling work done by its crumple zones - not to mention its crafty, thorax-protecting, double-pretensioning seat-belts and the fact that it is positively plump with hair-trigger airbags. Both of the crash-test dummies walked away unscathed from the photographed crash, we are assured. Or they would have done, if they could walk. "The car's structure crumpled perfectly," says Renault.

Now, any halfway curious car examiner would feel the onus to test these grand and potentially persuasive claims forthwith by stiffly accelerating the car into a wall of their own, just to see what happened. Unfortunately, in a busy weekend of shuttling about in the Modus, the opportunity never really presented itself - or at any rate, not at the same time as the courage. We'll have to take Renault's word on the car's safety, then.

For all the tough talk, though, it didn't take me long to break the sunroof. A couple of exploratory twists and the automatic mechanism died with the glass stuck open. In the wet, I should add. Serves me right, I suppose, for experimenting with it in inclement weather. As cold rain continued to lash the gearstick and hi-fi, I found myself thumbing the handbook for the emergency closing procedure - locating it, fortunately, long before the water in the cockpit had had a chance to reach my ankles.

But there are plenty of reasons to find the Modus appealing beyond the way it calls to the natural human aversion to injury. There's its cheerful, golf-buggy-like demeanour; its peculiar, circular rear-light clusters, which are, in common with the car as a whole, cute without being winsome; and the sheer back-end, somehow racy and jocular at the same time. There's the handy manner in which the triple rear-seat can be made to slide back for taller passengers. And there are the neatly various ways that seat can be made to fold out of the way of awkward loads. There's also, as an option, what Renault slightly rudely refers to as the "boot chute" - a groovy tailgate flap set into the bottom half of the back door, and a cheeky steal from the mechanism on the old-fashioned Mini. It means that when someone inconsiderately parks too close for you to raise the hatchback, you can drop the miniature tailgate and still get some kind of access to the boot. Handy on ferries and in other high-intensity parking situations, such as most residential streets in London.

My Modus came with a nice, stable, altogether unfrightening 1.4-litre engine. Simply and tidily laid out inside, it was also simple and tidy to drive, and a sight more responsive to one's basic desires than its sunroof. To rationalise the statistics slightly: eight out of 10 crash-test dummies said they wouldn't chew an automatically inflating pillow in any other supermini. And those dummies, you know - they're not stupid.

Giles Smith

Renault Modus 1.4 Dynamique
Price: From ¡ê10,500
Top speed: 110mph
Acceleration: 0-62mph in 11.4 secs
Consumption: 42.2mpg (combined)
At the wheel: Twiggy
On the stereo: The Beatles
En route for: St Tropez