Hyundai Concept Genesis - First Look - Motor Trend
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This car is going to shock you. It's going to shock GM and Toyota, too. Even BMW and Mercedes-Benz are going to pay attention. Hyundai calls it Concept Genesis, but you can forget the concept bit; apart from the odd piece of showcar eye-candy, you're looking at Korea's first production sport-luxury sedan. It has rear drive and a V-8 engine. And it'll be in a Hyundai showroom near you sometime in 2008.
Concept Genesis gives us the first glimpse of Hyundai's much-anticipated BH rear-drive architecture. For a company with a reputation for fast-tracking new models at a pace that makes even the Japanese dizzy, the BH has been a long time coming-more than five years, in fact. But that doesn't mean Hyundai has been slacking; Concept Genesis is on its second exterior (the previous design was scrapped, after the hugely expensive tooling process had been started) and third chassis setup (the rear axle was upgraded from a four-link configuration to five-link only last year). And when the production version launches next year, Hyundai will be a player in a sector that Toyota took 15 years longer to enter.
Chutzpah? Or confidence? Both swirl through a company driven by a fierce determination to succeed and, in particular, to beat the Japanese. Hyundai wants to be the world's fifth largest automaker by 2010, and the BH architecture revealed by Concept Genesis is a key part of the strategy.
Hyundai Concept Genesis. Luxury Sedan
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