2009 Motor Trend Car of the Year Contender: Hyundai Genesis
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Yogi Berra's great line, "deja vu all over again," has often been repurposed to automotive occasions, but it's hard to think of a better one than this case of the new Hyundai Genesis luxury sedan. Way back in 1989, Toyota introduced a big luxury sedan it called the Lexus LS 400 -- a car, Toyota declared, that would charge the imperial gates of M-B and BMW wearing nothing more than naked value, zenlike quality, and premium performance.
Where Yogi's deja vu comes in is that, almost 20 years later, Hyundai is not only reenacting Lexus's yellowing battle plan, but using it to do to Lexus what Lexus did to those one-time fat and happy German luxocar builders.
No, Hyundai's Genesis isn't a separate brand as Lexus is. But it's a car so apart from anything the Korean firm is associated with that it might as well be. Like those early Lexi, the Genesis has that same many-luxury-cars-morphed- into-one appearance. The shape is more Andy Williams than Placido Domingo. And of all the Genesis's many impersonated Lexus qualities, the most notable is its steering feel, which replicates the LS's highly oiled, precision-bearing, sensation, spot on.
So, too, the car's silky yet quick acceleration. In V-8-guise (a 290-horse V-6 comes standard), 60 mph can be dialed up in as little as 5.0 sec. Yet, even in ordinary go-with-the-flow acceleration, the Genesis's all-new 4.6L, 368-hp V-8 (*using premium fuel raises output to 375 hp and 333 lb-ft) is such a refined sweetheart that Deutschland's and Japan's brightest engineers ought to be sensing the hot breath of their South Korean counterparts on their necks right about now.
Does the Genesis have what it takes to score the 2009 Motor Trend Car of the Year honors? Find out on Nov. 18
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