All this activity presents problems for a marque such as Citroen. The 2CV aside, its cars used to be both mechanically advanced and futuristic-looking. Having lost that image, how to regain it? The latest concept designs from the company show it hedging its bets: the designs are both progressive and retro. It is seen as necessary to pick up some of the styling cues of the company's golden period from the mid 1950s through to the late 1970s. But this is nostalgia, and Citroen never used to be about nostalgia.

Paradoxically its stablemate, Peugeot, now produces more stylish cars. Having been dull and worthy for most of its history, it has no back catalogue of golden-era designs to sigh over. This is liberating: Peugeots today are not retro, cute, or ugly, just rather svelte and distinctly contemporary. Even Dyson admits he has one of the new sharply-styled little Peugeot 206s. That's another niche to be exploited, of course: the market for cars that are happy to be themselves, and of their time, rather than trying to evoke something else or another era. Pluralism is all very well, but architecture teaches us that in a pluralist world the modern tends to reassert itself over the post-modern. Which means retro and cute cars are just another passing phase.

Jaguar S-Class