Genesis GV80 review – A standalone, premium spin-off and one good-looking car
"The GV80 flagship is the Audi Q7 or BMW X5 you always wanted," writes Attitude's Darren Styles
Say hello to the biggest car brand you’ve (probably) never heard of. A car brand that, just as Phil Collins and his band leave the stage for the last time, intends to jockey unashamedly for their Google ranking. Say hello to Genesis.
Long story short: Genesis is to Hyundai as Lexus is to Toyota, and as Audi is to Volkswagen — a standalone, premium spin-off from a mainstream volume brand. As a result, there’s the potential for good and not-so-good therein.
Good: if you’re to buy a car from an all-new make, then it’s comforting to know that its design, development and build is in the hands not of a plucky start-up but of seasoned, well-resourced engineers who understand the fundamentals. Without this, you end up assembling a Tesla 3 beneath an awning in the car park.
Not-so-good: you can end up paying more for the same thing underneath, with more than a whiff of the Emperor’s new clothes. An Audi A3 is lovely, but we all know there’s a perfectly good Volkswagen Golf under there, right?
My first acquaintance with Genesis suggests this might be different, however. The GV80 flagship shown here is, very obviously, in terms of both design and scale, not a Hyundai. Notwithstanding the transformation of the Korean brand over two decades into the manufacturer of some quite brilliant product, what you see here is a step up in both presentation and execution. This is an upscale SUV with echoes of Bentley’s Bentayga in the outline and a Range Rover’s crispness at the edges.
Genesis call their design aesthetic “athletic elegance”, and the reality — imposing front grille, quad headlamps and a sizeable footprint — feels closer to prop forward than an Olympic sprinter, but there’s no denying it’s well dressed for the part. This is one good-looking car.
There’s no denying the excellence of the result.
It’s the same when you step inside — the length and girth of the GV80 means a cabin with plenty of cubic capacity, but goodness me the space has been used well. The level of appointment is borderline lavish, though the design fundamentals are gratifyingly minimal, but it’s the materials, fit and finish that are exemplary. Soft-touch surfaces are all about, the rotary gear selector is glass-topped and open-pore wood finishes scream Scandi penthouse. Alas the steering wheel screams 70s Buick rental car, but you can’t have everything.
On the move, that lovely cabin ambience is preserved, rolling refinement is so good I found myself saying aloud “It’s really quiet in here” to check my hearing. Turns out the Genesis folk felt that silence spoke to luxury, hence there’s acoustic glass in the windscreen and front windows, hollow alloy wheels to reduce road noise and what’s described as the world’s first Road Active Noise Cancellation (RANC) technology, whereby a processor uses the car’s audio system to output opposing frequencies to the noise coming in. There’s no denying the excellence of the result.
Nor the performance of an all-new, 278PS, six-cylinder diesel-fired powerplant, however counter-intuitive that sounds in a world moving to hybrid or electric powertrains. There’s a reason engines like this were (are) popular in cars like these — they surge from the line, pull from low down and run quietly and efficiently at the top end. The GV80 isn’t configured as a sports car, but there’s plenty of go to match the show.
So where does that leave us? Quietly impressed. On paper, this is a car that sets no records, breaks little in the way of new ground and comes from a stable not yet known. But like Phil Collins and his mates, that’s not stopped this Genesis from stitching together an album that could well be a sleeper hit.
People who buy nice things enjoy difference, are intrinsically early adopters and respond to good design and a high-quality finish. The GV80 ticks all of those boxes and a few more.
Genesis GV80
3-litre, six-cylinder diesel
278PS
433lb/ft torque
0-62mph in 7.5 seconds
143mph
33.1mpg
220g/km CO2
£56,715
For more information, visit genesis.com. This review originally appeared in issue 346 of Attitude magazine.