Men's Journal

The Hyundai Genesis has rear seat legroom fit for a stock broker Photo credit: Kevin Cooley

Is the phrase “luxury Hyundai” an oxymoron? To find out, we played chauffeur for a day in the upscale new Genesis sedan.

by Eddie Alterman

I am on the corner of 26th and Park in Manhattan, waiting for my first pickup of the day. Wearing a dark suit and equipped with the requisite Marlboro Lights 100s and smooth jazz CDs, I make the transition from motoring journalist to New York City livery cab driver in disturbingly few steps. There’s only one kink in the transformation: Rather than the usual Mercedes-Benz S-Class or Lincoln Town Car used to ferry discerning clients around town, I’ll be chauffeuring my charges in a gleaming black Hyundai Genesis. The weirdest part: They might not even notice the difference.

See, Hyundai swears that it benchmarked Mercedes in building the Genesis. The sedan’s interior is as spacious as the S-Class’s, slathered in leather and wired with a respectable amount of technology. The Genesis even offers a potent V-8 as an option. On paper it checks nearly all the boxes of the premium automobile set, at a piddling cost of around $40,000 fully loaded. It sounds too good to be true and definitely too good to be a Hyundai. Hell, even the company knows that, which is why you won’t find its emblem on the hood or grille. And this is why I’m pulling a Driving Miss Daisy. Consider my experiment the automotive equivalent of those old Folgers commercials: We’ve replaced plush rides with the Genesis to see if a few suited power brokers, used to being driven around in style, can tell the difference.

At 9:30 am I begin my mission. Joel is an editor at a large trade publication serving the entertainment industry. As I open the door he notices Hyundai’s logo on the rear wheel. “Hyundai, huh? It doesn’t look like one, which is good,” he says as he gets in. “But it doesn’t really stand out very much, either.” An early jab for the Genesis, but an honest assessment. The car’s styling ethos could be deemed Luxury Sedan Potluck, with some Benz in the headlights, a little BMW in the shape of the side glass, and a dash of Lexus at the back — all making for a somewhat bland soufflé.

Joel wants me to take him to his apartment at Columbus Circle, providing my first chance to see how this thing handles the mania of NYC rush hour. He says there will be a tip in it for me if I am quick about it, except the crosstown streets are jammed with automotive plaque. It takes me 20 minutes to jog only a couple of blocks west. I watch as skateboarders and rickshaws leave me in the dust. I have a luxury sedan at my disposal, with a monstrous V-8 engine underhood, and I’m getting smoked by centuries-old technology. Taxi drivers with padded bumpers jam themselves into the sliver of space I leave as a buffer. As eight cars merge into one lane on 27th Street, I thank the Genesis’s easy-modulating brake pedal and mohel-friendly ride for keeping my charge’s bottled water off of his tie.

“Hey,” Joel says, “can you see what’s on the radio?” I flick on the Lexicon 17-speaker stereo (the same brand that makes the audio systems for Rolls-Royce) and locate XM. It takes me a moment to figure out the two unmarked buttons on the faceplate, but soon we’re soothed by Coldplay. Like most upmarket cars, the Genesis has an in-dash LCD screen and a joystick-like knob that lets me whirl and click through the car’s entertainment and navigation menus. The ergonomics are respectable, and the interface is intuitive. The feel of the switches and knobs isn’t quite as precise as that of an Audi’s perfectly tactile console, but Hyundai wins the classiest-interior-at-this-price-point trophy. That trophy, ironically, is made of cheap Chinese plastic.

I drop off Joel and hustle over to a Swiss investment bank’s headquarters on 24th and Park for my next fare. Thankfully, the Hyundai’s 375-hp 4.6-liter V-8 allows me to squirt and juke among the taxicab arabesque. If you’re keeping track at home, it’s just seven horses down on the 5.5-liter Mercedes V-8 in the $60,000 E550.

Waiting for me by the curb is Francis, a young, smartly dressed derivatives analyst heading uptown to a meeting. I have no idea what his job entails, and Francis is too taken with the car to explain. “This looks pretty small from the outside, so I wasn’t expecting there to be this much room,” he says, extending his 6-1 frame. “In a stretched Town Car, the sensation of rear-seat space is more mental than physical. You never really use it. Plus, Town Car drivers tell me they get 10 mpg. What are you getting?” I tell him the readout says 18 mpg in town, and he nods sagely.

I drop off Francis and run back to the same corner for another round of bankers. This time a foursome — Ari, Ned, David, and Thomas — piles in. David is Korean, and he isn’t surprised by how nice the backseat is. “In Korea, Hyundai makes big, presidential-style limos,” he says. “They’re all about the backseat, where the chairman sits.” I look down at the Genesis’s leather-enveloped dash, heated and cooled driver’s seat, and wood-rimmed steering wheel, and chant a little benediction to Hyundai’s American research department.

After fiddling with the air vents built into the rear door’s pillars for a few minutes, David calls his colleagues to attention. “Check this out,” he says, pointing up. “There’s a bubble in the roof for headroom.” From the middle of the backseat, Ned chimes in, adding, “It’s comfortable back here, even for the guy riding bitch.” But Thomas isn’t a fan. “I think the leather feels a little too fake; it’s not as soft as a Benz’s. And the headliner isn’t suede or anything nice. I like my Maxima better.”

That last jab hits the Genesis right in the gut. For all its posturing as a half-off Mercedes-Benz, it’s really competing against midsize family sedans like the Nissan Maxima, Toyota Avalon, and Pontiac G8. There’s no doubt that it offers more amenities, space, and comfort than any of those cars, plus the Genesis is backed by Hyundai’s 10-year warranty. It’s an honest-to-God steal. But will the American public spend between 30 and 40 grand on a car with an italicized H on the wheels? If yes, then Hyundai may spin off the Genesis name into its own higher-end brand, in the same way that Honda has Acura and Nissan has Infiniti. (In fact, there’s already a Genesis sports coupe set to debut next year.) If not, then the world always needs janitors and reasonably priced foreign cars, right?

This article originally appeared in the October 2008 issue of Men’s Journal.

Print this article