This is Honda’s new Civic hatch, the 10th generation of its evergreen family car. Well, officially this Geneva motor show is billed as a prototype, but 99% of what you see here will reputedly be coming down the Swindon production line early next year.

It’s a global car for Honda and it joins the recently unveiled four-door saloon and three-door coupe. A Tourer-badged estate is also expected by mid 2018.

Of arguably more interest is the news that a Type R model is expected to arrive much more early on in this model’s lifecycle, compared to the current Type R whose arrival at the hot hatch bash was more than fashionably late. Expect its tyre-smoking debut by the end of 2018.

The Civic is a big deal for Swindon, which has just benefited from a £21m upgrade to handle 10th-gen production for all markets including America, an injection that brings total investment in the plant to a hefty £2.25b. Boosted by the arrival of the recent arrival of the Jazz and HR-V, Honda is hoping the Civic will push annual European sales north of 160,000.

The new Civic, now in its 40th year, is exactly that – new. It’s built around a brand new chassis architecture that’s allowed lead Civic designer Daisuke Tsutamori to create a car 30mm wider, 20mm lower and 130mm longer. The result is a car that looks significantly chunkier and, in Prototype guise, notably more aggressive than the outgoing model. ‘We wanted to shock our customers and move them away from traditional evolutionary styling,’ says Tsutamori.