Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Best of the Bay (Part 3): Three Genesisisises. They’re Good.

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Best of the Bay (Part 3): Three Genesisisises. They’re Good. · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  John Summers is the motoring historian.
• 0:02
  He was a company car thrashing, technology sales rep, that turned
• 0:06
  into a fairly inept sports bike rider.
• 0:08
  Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of
• 0:12
  cheap and fast, and not much reliable.
• 0:15
  On his show, he gets together with various co hosts to talk about new
• 0:18
  and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.
• 0:39
  Good day.
• 0:40
  Good morning.
• 0:41
  Good afternoon.
• 0:42
  It is John Summers, the motoring historian.
• 0:45
  This is part three of my road tests of cars that I drove down in Santa
• 0:50
  Cruz towards the end of last year.
• 0:53
  Um, this time three Genesis's.
• 0:59
  So in the interest now of breaking down the third wall, took a break, is now
• 1:03
  the day after I did this earlier, I did the first set of recording, right?
• 1:07
  And that's relevant.
• 1:08
  It's relevant that I break down the third wall at this point, right?
• 1:11
  Because it was tiring.
• 1:14
  Right.
• 1:14
  It was tiring doing these cars back to back to back to back to back.
• 1:19
  And actually, I was thinking about it afterwards.
• 1:21
  I've never done speed dating.
• 1:22
  Speed dating was something that came, you know, after my time dating.
• 1:26
  I'm not sure if I've really had a time dating, but speed
• 1:29
  dating definitely came after it.
• 1:31
  At the time when I learned about speed dating, I was like, how fucking terrible.
• 1:34
  You never get the chance to get to know a person, like you're dismissed in less
• 1:38
  time than it takes you to flick through a magazine in a dentist's waiting room.
• 1:41
  You know, is that how trivial it, you know, we've made
• 1:44
  relationships, but you know, I didn't need to be so pearl clutchy.
• 1:48
  With hindsight, I realized that that speed dating, you probably know in
• 1:52
  the first five minutes whether or not somebody's really interesting.
• 1:55
  You meet half, you meet six people in one evening.
• 1:58
  You know, which one you want to stay in touch with, you know, it actually,
• 2:01
  it allows you to do a swifter sift.
• 2:04
  And even in the case of these cars, I'm not sure if people were like this, but
• 2:08
  in the case of these cars, you developed a rhythm of what you were going to do.
• 2:13
  So in other words, you got the car, there was a roundabout
• 2:16
  that you could drive around.
• 2:17
  So I did that straight away coming off the roundabout.
• 2:19
  You could usually get a launch to already get a sense.
• 2:22
  Of what the car was, was like, then there was like a 30 mile an hour, like pottering
• 2:27
  section when you could like, you know, play with the infotainment and do all
• 2:31
  of the kinds of stuff that has nothing to do with driving, but it is actually
• 2:34
  important to, uh, to assess in a car.
• 2:37
  Then, as I say, there was the dually bit that became increasingly less
• 2:42
  traffic y and allowed increasingly, you know, higher speeds until eventually
• 2:46
  there was a piece of road, there were sections of road where you could.
• 2:49
  Consistently, as, uh, as Keith Code once said, do what you liked with the throttle.
• 2:54
  What's a straight, Keith?
• 2:55
  Wherever you can do what you like with the throttle.
• 2:58
  I always think that's a good definition of, uh, of a straight.
• 3:02
  So the Genesis GV80 Coupe.
• 3:06
  It's an SUV, but a coupe.
• 3:09
  I know, like, BMW X6, like, what is the point?
• 3:14
  Like, haven't we grown out of an SUV as a, as a coupe?
• 3:18
  I know, what a turdbucket.
• 3:20
  That was my initial thought upon seeing it.
• 3:24
  But I have to say, had the Lucid and the Camry not been there, that
• 3:31
  GV80, the coupe, would have been my pick of the cars as the best car.
• 3:39
  And the reason is that I realized when I was driving it that we're
• 3:43
  all in a realm now where we're spending a lot of money on a car.
• 3:47
  In this case, 70 grand.
• 3:49
  And most people are making a huge payment for a very long time.
• 3:54
  And at some point in that, maybe when you're hating your corporate job, or
• 3:59
  you're getting a divorce or, you know, one of these kinds of circumstances, at some
• 4:03
  point you might regret that seven, 800 payment each month that has put you in.
• 4:10
  any of the many of the cars that we drove.
• 4:12
  Hell, you might regret the three or four hundred dollars it would take you to
• 4:15
  get into the Camry or the Fiat 500 if it was, you know, if you were out of work.
• 4:20
  I know I would, I know that's why I always like to buy cars outright, but
• 4:23
  we live in a world where most people are borrowing money to do this and are.
• 4:27
  Eating a massive payment each month, the Genesis GV80 coupe is the car most
• 4:34
  likely to make you forget how painful that price point is because it feels
• 4:41
  luxury when you sit in it, the way the seat looks, the way the seat grips
• 4:46
  you, the way the thing just just the look and feel that catwalk moment.
• 4:53
  Is it as high quality as the Lexus?
• 4:55
  No, actually the touch points when you really, but that initial Shazam, you know,
• 5:02
  it's fast fashion, that catwalk moment, the GV80 Coupe really has a Shazam.
• 5:10
  Now, the rep was telling me that it's a driver focused design.
• 5:15
  And frankly, if I'd heard a say in that before I drove it, I thought,
• 5:19
  what a load of marketing bollocks.
• 5:22
  No.
• 5:23
  Right?
• 5:23
  No, in comparison to the normal GV80 that they had there, the normal
• 5:28
  GV80 that was like a Range Rover.
• 5:30
  The coupe one, it felt sporty.
• 5:34
  It felt cool.
• 5:35
  I don't know what they'd done with.
• 5:37
  I don't know if it was this.
• 5:38
  I, I spoke to others, other people who didn't like the coupe and
• 5:42
  who liked the normal one better.
• 5:43
  That's for specific differences.
• 5:45
  You know, I think maybe the modes were a bit easier to access on the coupe.
• 5:49
  The overall design language is very, very Bentley on both vehicles and the
• 5:54
  manufacturer rep. Thank you, Amanda, by the way, for taking the time to
• 5:58
  talk to me and to all this other boring old gray guys about these cars.
• 6:03
  And thank you for paying attention in the product training and so on that you'd
• 6:05
  done because whatever the, the stuff they taught her was directly relevant.
• 6:09
  The stuff that she was sharing with us was directly relevant to what we were
• 6:12
  talking about with the car design.
• 6:14
  This Genesis design language with these two strakes, they call them.
• 6:18
  Power lines, how are you going to call them cocaine lines?
• 6:22
  Are they, but I love all this design fluff, right?
• 6:25
  Because I sat in it being like, there's a cent where I sat in one of them.
• 6:30
  I think the, the coop, whatever it would be an option on any like G V G 80 kind
• 6:35
  of vehicle is on the center console.
• 6:37
  It's plastic.
• 6:38
  But it has a sort of mesh pattern in it that it makes it look really deep.
• 6:43
  It doesn't make it look like surface tension.
• 6:45
  It makes it look like you can look into the material.
• 6:47
  And this mesh is like mirrored in some of the wheel designs.
• 6:51
  And it's mirrored in that ostentatious too big grill and it's Bentley.
• 6:56
  You know, when I, I said as much to the manufacturer rep and she was like,
• 7:00
  well, our designer came from Bentley.
• 7:02
  Absolutely.
• 7:03
  Right.
• 7:03
  Now, interestingly, there are a couple of things.
• 7:06
  There are some of the stalks that on each one of the three cars kind of felt
• 7:10
  cheap, but that was the only place where you felt it had overstepped the mark.
• 7:14
  Everywhere else, the thing just felt Bentley Junior.
• 7:19
  You know, like, literally, I don't need to spend 300, 000.
• 7:22
  I can get away with 70, 000.
• 7:23
  Literally, that was how the thing felt.
• 7:26
  And for what it's worth, the car park appeal of these, uh, of these genesis.
• 7:31
  I've asked people, women who have an eye for fashion, when we've
• 7:34
  seen them in the car park, you know, what is that over there?
• 7:37
  Do you like it?
• 7:38
  And what is it?
• 7:39
  And, and the answer is There's been a blend of yeses and nos and
• 7:43
  I hate it or I love it, often based upon the color and the way that
• 7:46
  individual one's been specced.
• 7:48
  There's a general agreement that the grill is big, but the brands suggested
• 7:52
  are usually Bentley and sometimes Lincoln.
• 7:55
  Now that's impressive for a brand that was born not that long ago.
• 8:00
  And when you say Genesis, a lot of people still say who in the way that when you
• 8:05
  said Lexus in 1993, a lot of people said.
• 8:10
  Who?
• 8:11
  Myself included in fairness, I was cynical about Lexus.
• 8:14
  I felt they were just a gussied up Toyota.
• 8:17
  Yes, they are, but it's worth it.
• 8:18
  The gussying up is, is worth it.
• 8:21
  You know, just an aside, it's not just me that feels like that, right?
• 8:24
  These pickup trucks that I was looking at, the base spec ones bring a lot less
• 8:29
  than the, uh, the higher spec ones.
• 8:31
  So in other words, my wife and son wanting respectively, um,
• 8:35
  leather seats and heated seats.
• 8:37
  That.
• 8:38
  Puts you into like a Lariat or, uh, whatever the one, you know, not
• 8:43
  the XL or the XLT in Ford, not the tradesman or the big horn in Dodge.
• 8:48
  It like puts you onto the next level.
• 8:49
  And it seems to me on a 30 grand truck to get the leather and the nice seats,
• 8:53
  you're paying an extra five grand.
• 8:55
  Right.
• 8:55
  And when I put that to my wife, her point was, was probably worth it.
• 8:59
  It's not to me.
• 9:00
  Of course, this is why I like the truck that I bought because it has this.
• 9:03
  Gussied up leather, you know, and heated seats interior and it has cruise
• 9:07
  and all this other stuff makes the thing much, uh, much nicer to own.
• 9:10
  But yeah, I mean that 2016 Tundra, it feels very last generation in comparison
• 9:15
  to stuff like this Genesis that I drove that, yes is a SUV and yes is a coupe and
• 9:21
  yes feels sporty and yes could tow and yes would look impressive at the golf club.
• 9:27
  And no, I didn't particularly like the color combination, but you know, you
• 9:30
  could have it in a cool color combination.
• 9:33
  An impressive piece of kit.
• 9:35
  I'm just looking at the notes.
• 9:37
  Interior ostentatious, but not too much.
• 9:40
  More than the Lexus, a statement.
• 9:42
  I have arrived.
• 9:44
  Love the power delivery, especially the, and the exhaust
• 9:47
  note when it was in sport mode.
• 9:49
  Yeah, I really want to underline that I had a separate line about this, the
• 9:54
  awesome look and feel of the seats.
• 9:58
  And I also wrote, uniquely Genesis, kind of Bentley, but not, and that's why you
• 10:04
  can forgive the overstated design and the slightly cheap feeling knobs and dials
• 10:09
  in places, because this isn't a Bentley, and it's not trying to be a Bentley, it's
• 10:14
  trying to be a Korean luxury, and that's, you know, it says that Lexus wasn't a
• 10:20
  straight copy of the Mercedes S Class because people who could never afford a
• 10:24
  Mercedes S Class could buy it, It wasn't.
• 10:27
  And this Genesis, this has the, and comparing the three together, there's
• 10:32
  definitely a feel of a developing Korean design language here.
• 10:37
  And bring it on guys, bring it on, because two of these Genesis's I really liked.
• 10:42
  And the third one, you know, if I'd liked Range Rovers, maybe I'd like that.
• 10:46
  This GV80 Coupe, there was no creep in the transmission either.
• 10:50
  Don't know what I think of that.
• 10:52
  I remember test driving a Genesis or maybe a Hyundai Equus or, I mean, if you
• 10:58
  go through my archives, you'll be able to find the tests that I did because I,
• 11:02
  I wrote tests, the Kia K900 as well, like the big Kia from a hundred years ago.
• 11:08
  But I remember one of those that I drove 10, 15 years ago,
• 11:12
  you could switch the creep off.
• 11:13
  And I dare say somewhere buried in the menus, you could
• 11:16
  turn the creep on and off.
• 11:17
  But of course the yeast, EVs don't have creep.
• 11:21
  It was just interesting that this gas hybrid didn't have creep.
• 11:25
  I just want to make now a really important aside.
• 11:29
  This probably should have gone in the intro piece, but you know, I've
• 11:32
  just organized what you want to do.
• 11:34
  Every one of these cars had a bespoke way of putting it in gear.
• 11:42
  Once upon a time, when you sat in a car, you put the key in the ignition, you
• 11:45
  turned it one, two, three positions, the engine coughs and starts, right?
• 11:50
  Uh, then we, some cars had the push start, then we went to the proximity,
• 11:55
  you know, with these EVs, each maker has sort of done their own way of pushing a
• 12:02
  button or pulling a little lever or it's all variations on pushing a button, but.
• 12:09
  The fact that putting the car into gear, there's probably half a dozen different
• 12:14
  methods to put a car into gear, shows us the inflection point that we're
• 12:18
  at, that literally when I was a lad in the 80s, every car, you just put the
• 12:21
  key in the ignition and turned, every car started the same, the same like a
• 12:25
  light switch in the corner of the room.
• 12:26
  That is not so anymore.
• 12:29
  And, and interestingly, the car that perhaps gave me the
• 12:32
  most chip was the Fiat 500.
• 12:34
  And it's very plain inside, but there's no, like, you're looking
• 12:37
  on the column, you're looking on the floor, there's nothing there.
• 12:40
  Where the heater controls are on the instrument pinnacle, like
• 12:43
  on the center console, there's a P, a D, an R, and it's on there.
• 12:50
  But you like push a button, like, you know, 30 seconds on the microwave, please.
• 12:55
  you know the lucid's got this like little lever on there it's basically you see
• 12:59
  they've got like a version of the lever that if you know toyota's cruise control
• 13:03
  it's a bit like that but in a different place on the you know on the console but
• 13:07
  yeah it did take me you had to relearn how to put your foot on the brake and
• 13:13
  put your thumb on the lever on the side and move it from P to D, you know, that
• 13:18
  process, which has been instinctive for so long, that is being reinvented
• 13:23
  by these, by these new vehicles.
• 13:33
  The next one I drove was the GV80, like Range Rover one.
• 13:37
  It had white leather interior, which, you know, It is awesome interior design,
• 13:44
  awesome, like, lovely place to be.
• 13:46
  Similar quality to the other Genesis, the three Genesis bulletproof.
• 13:50
  Quality, not quite as nice as the Lexus or the Range, but
• 13:53
  still really, uh, really nice.
• 13:56
  I felt like the seating position in the normal GV80 was different from the Goop.
• 14:01
  It felt like higher up somehow.
• 14:03
  I didn't like it.
• 14:04
  As much.
• 14:05
  I was surprised by how different the two of them were.
• 14:07
  I mean, I said that a moment ago, but yeah, I was surprised
• 14:09
  by how different they were.
• 14:10
  The other thing I wrote down on the, the, the range rry, like normal SUV GV 80, not
• 14:15
  the coupe, uh, the, the center console.
• 14:18
  And this is on all the genesis.
• 14:19
  Is, is, is, is, is, is, is genocide, uh, gen, um, the center
• 14:25
  console opens in the middle.
• 14:27
  It's a small thing, but it's just one of those things where every time I
• 14:29
  operated, I was like, this is cool.
• 14:31
  You know, it was just a nice thing to, I don't think the novelty of that wears off.
• 14:35
  You know, the novelty of good design doesn't wear off.
• 14:37
  The novelty of gimmicks wears off, but the novelty of good design doesn't wear off.
• 14:41
  Maybe this is a gimmick, not good design, who knows?
• 14:44
  I mean, and another thing that I noted was I toggled around on
• 14:47
  the infotainment a little bit.
• 14:48
  I was getting more confident with the infotainment and less, you know, Like
• 14:52
  those chimps at the beginning of 2001, a Space odyssey with the black box.
• 14:56
  Normally I'm a bit like that with technology, but on this occasion I toggled
• 15:00
  around a bit more and I thought it was perhaps interesting that whilst the coupe
• 15:04
  was, uh, was achieved 13 miles gallon, the ranging sedan, you know, fallback window
• 15:12
  one was doing 17, which maybe reflected how the two, the two were being driven
• 15:16
  and their, you know, and their relative.
• 15:18
  driving characteristics.
• 15:20
  But I mean, just as an aside, that's terrible, isn't it?
• 15:22
  For a new car.
• 15:23
  It's really appalling for a new middle of the 2020s, you know, 40 years since
• 15:31
  we first learned of global warming and, you know, the import, you know, I don't
• 15:35
  want to get up on my high horse, but it does seem like we spent an awful lot of.
• 15:40
  design energy developing in not the best way if 13 miles to the gallon.
• 15:47
  That's even worse than my Tundra.
• 15:49
  Anyway, enough of such trivial practical things.
• 15:52
  I love the G80 sedan.
• 15:55
  That was the next one that I drove.
• 15:57
  This one didn't have the Bentley mesh pan wheels.
• 16:00
  This one had like multi spoked wheels with these like little blobby bubbles in.
• 16:05
  There's a kid in the pickup line whose parents have one.
• 16:08
  So I'd seen it before.
• 16:09
  On the SUV, it's, it's kind of too much.
• 16:11
  On the sedan, I loved it.
• 16:14
  The sedan also has the same, had the same like matte black finish on it.
• 16:18
  It had a red leather interior, not bright red, but pretty red.
• 16:22
  The whole thing really worked for me.
• 16:24
  I mean, I just got it in it, got in it and drove it.
• 16:27
  As I say, it was the third of the Genesis that I'd driven.
• 16:50
  I think I drove it faster than any of the other cars, and that reflects how
• 16:55
  comfortable it was at those speeds.
• 16:58
  When I got out of it, I walked all the way around it for the first time and
• 17:01
  realized it was a three and a half liter V6, which I would have guessed if you'd
• 17:06
  have asked me, but I'd literally not thought about it before I just got in and
• 17:09
  hoofed it and the hoofing of it, it was.
• 17:14
  and better than my old AMG Benz.
• 17:17
  Well, you would hope so, wouldn't you?
• 17:19
  But 3.
• 17:20
  5 turbo AWD, I did not expect it to have AMG like king of the road, kind of.
• 17:29
  Planted quality in, in, you know, sweeping turns.
• 17:34
  I mean, I guess it's turbocharged, isn't it?
• 17:36
  But you know, the enthusiasm that it lunged forward at high speeds
• 17:42
  was, was really, really impressive.
• 17:44
  I left it in sport mode the whole time.
• 17:47
  I didn't mess around with the sport plus mode.
• 17:50
  Um, you can do.
• 17:51
  Custom modes, this is true of all three of the Genesis.
• 17:55
  The Sport Plus turns the traction control off automatically.
• 17:58
  This and the Coupe had Sport Plus.
• 18:01
  The Range Rovery one didn't have Sport Plus.
• 18:04
  It just had like a sport kind of mode, which makes sense.
• 18:06
  I would program my own settings with these, but you need to drive the car
• 18:11
  further and get more familiar with them before you could really, uh, you could
• 18:15
  really choose that, that properly.
• 18:17
  Really, the G80, it wasn't like I, it was like, wow, it blew me away.
• 18:23
  This was all, you know, I probably had more fun driving the Elantra N and
• 18:28
  definitely the Ioniq N was far more of a, you know, product that's looking
• 18:35
  towards 2030 rather than a product that's looking towards 1990, but I'm
• 18:40
  a child of the late 20th century.
• 18:43
  And I'm also an old man now.
• 18:45
  And I love a big, fast sedan and that Genesis just did everything
• 18:50
  that it says on the tin.
• 18:51
  And I'm sitting here now thinking, you know, there was one question
• 18:54
  was one of the things, categories we had to vote on was if it was
• 18:57
  our money, what would we buy?
• 18:59
  And, you know, without a moment's hesitation, it would be that G80.
• 19:03
  New or used, you know, and I would heartily recommend if you, if you
• 19:08
  just need a car to just do the job and you can drop 80 grand.
• 19:13
  There's never going to be, whether it's Goodwood, whether it's a track
• 19:17
  day, whether it's moving your family around, whether it's fitting it in the
• 19:21
  car park, whether it's a weekend in Tahoe, there's never, there's never
• 19:25
  going to be a piece of bullshit that you throw at that G80 that he doesn't wear.
• 19:31
  better than you ever thought it could.
• 19:34
  It's got the sinews and skeleton of a Teutonic saloon, but with
• 19:39
  this really cool, kind of Bentley, kind of Korean, kind of pass me
• 19:44
  the wasabi kind of thing going on.
• 19:47
  Yeah, and I know wasabi is not Korea, right?
• 19:49
  I said that because it has a different feel.
• 19:55
  It has, you know, the skyline was not the same as a Porsche Turbo.
• 20:02
  It might have had the same notion about it, four wheel drive,
• 20:06
  turbocharge, ultimate performance.
• 20:08
  You know, all of that might have been the same, but the Skyline was done in a
• 20:12
  uniquely Japanese kind of way, and Genesis are walking towards, arguably, or already
• 20:19
  there with that kind of design language.
• 20:21
  So, uh, Bravo.
• 20:23
  Most enjoyable.
• 20:24
  And thanks for bringing the car.
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