Creating luxury: Hyundai Genesis

If at first you don’t succeed—well, we all know how the saying goes. The founder of Twitter, Biz Stone, recently said it a little differently: “Timing, perseverance, and 10 years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.”

You only have to look at Lego to see how true this is. Take a straw poll of when people think the company came to market, and the 1970s seems to be the most common answer. The truth is it was much earlier. Founded in 1934 by a Danish carpenter, Ole Kirk Christiansen, Lego originally made wooden toys. Its foray into plastic toys began in 1947. However, the Lego brick as we know it today was only patented in 1958. The plastic to make it snap properly into place took another five years to perfect before it hit the market. Attempt after attempt after attempt was made to get it right. But once it was, the rest is history.

It’s this persistence that is evident after spending a week behind the wheel of the Hyundai Genesis. The South Korean company is simply indefatigable in its determination to be taken seriously as a luxury car manufacturer. Some may well scoff at this, but there can be no doubt that Hyundai, and its sister company Kia, have made the biggest strides of any car company in the past 30 years—not just in quality, but also in driveability and styling. So, can Hyundai create a proper luxury vehicle? The car you see here is their answer.

The Genesis is a full-size sedan and is pitched squarely at BMW, Jaguar, and Mercedes. Taking a leaf out of their playbook, the layout is identical: there’s a powerful six-cylinder up front, an eight-speed automatic in the middle, and the drive goes to the rear. It’s the purest set-up for steering feel and far easier to get the ride–handling balance sorted, so that’s definitely a tick.

Cast your eye over the car and it’s actually quite a handsome thing. While it appears to shrink in photographs, acres of sheet metal are on display, and it is very, very wide. Start dissecting the design, and elements of Mercedes, BMW, and Lexus jump out at you. During the week in our possession, someone even asked if it was a new Jag, so its styling isn’t exactly stomach churning. There is one thing very wrong with it, however—the badge.