Midtown Madness 3 confirms what we've all secretly believed for years: If the day is sunny and the breeze is gentle and the air is just right, a 1985 Renault becomes the Ultimate Driving Machine. You are pretending not to remember the vehicle in question, but you do remember it. On glamorous days it was called "Le Car." Because Renault is a French company, get it? Haw!

In Midtown Madness 3 you get to drive a 1985 Renault really, really fast through the streets and sidewalks of its home stomping grounds, Paris. "Drive" is really the wrong word, though; you get to knock over light standards and fenceposts and you get to frighten the children and the pedestrians and the odd stray mime artist. You get to operate your little Le Car like a complete bloody fool with zero consequences. It is about as great as simulated motoring gets.

The 1985 Renault is just one of a great many real cars available for your enjoyment in Midtown Madness 3. A classic Mustang is in here too, along with a New Beetle, a big pimpin' stretch limo, a tour bus, a cement truck and many others. The Le Car is the worst of the bunch. It makes farty exhaust noises. It accelerates like a refrigerator and handles like one too. It is yellow. But it is the most fun you will have with a video game car all year. Why? Because nobody expects anything from a Le Car, save frequent repair bills and funny looks from other drivers. A Le Car has trouble going faster than 60, even when it has been driven off a cliff and is freefalling for the valley floor. A Le Car is squarer than a Chevrolet Citation. So to see the little thing letting its hair down and crashing a few sidewalk caf�s is exhilarating indeed.

Midtown Madness 3 is another entry in that growing collection of games about bad driving. It is cut from the same cloth as Driver and Crazy Taxi and even Grand Theft Auto III, although its sense of humour is considerably sunnier than GTA's. The idea is simple: Get where you're going as quickly as you can, and pay no heed whatever to traffic laws, good sense, common decency or physics. If driving up a staircase is quicker than detouring to the next block, by all means drive up the staircase. It is perfectly unlike Gran Turismo. "Take your authentic suspension and handling," it says, "and stick them in that mime over there. Or stick them where the sun does not shine. Your choice." It realizes that driving like a complete bloody fool is way more fun than learning the nuances of understeer and oversteer. It realizes that brakes are for losers.

The game is rich with ways to drive like a complete bloody fool. Something called "Work Undercover" puts you through a series of mission-based challenges, delivering newspapers and ferrying passengers around. There are scores of races through the streets of both Paris and Washington D.C., and best of all, the thing works with Xbox Live, which means you can race through Washington D.C. against real live people who are actually sitting in Washington D.C.! You can talk to them too, and taunt them about their city not being as nice as Paris, and yell "Freedom Fries in your face!" when you cut them off in your Le Car. They will be good sports about it because they are playing Midtown Madness 3 and not Gran Turismo and are therefore funloving and not sour. Also, because they just saw The Italian Job and have some mischief planned for their little Mini Coopers. Careful out there, Le Car. Careful.