After years of teasing one stunning concept car after another, Genesis is finally ready to enter the sports coupe market.
Luc Donkerwolker, chief creative officer for the Hyundai-owned luxury brand, confirmed to media at the recent New York Motor Show that the process is underway to develop a new sports coupe and convertible using the recently revealed X Gran Coupe and X Gran Convertibles concepts as a starting point. Genesis has hinted at sports cars since it took the covers off the Essentia concept in 2018, but despite producing so many, including the functional X Gran Berlinetta that Jacky Ickx drove at Bathurst earlier this year, it has never moved beyond the concept phase.
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Now, though, Donkerwolke believes the time is right, with Genesis established with a line-up of sedans and SUVs as well as the introduction of its Magma performance sub-brand and Genesis Magma Racing Hypercar program.
“We have been doing coupes and we have been looking at the business cases of each of the concepts that we’ve done,” Donkerwolke told Torquecafe. “And, you know, the brand being so young you are realizing that sometimes the market is not ready for those products yet. Because they are obviously quite exclusive and you have, first of all, to build up and to consolidate the brand. Once you have to achieve that, you can then do one step higher at a time. Now we believe it’s the right time.”
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Donkerwolke said the timings have aligned as Genesis establishes itself in the premium market alongside BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Lexus, as well as understanding what the market wants. Specifically, the brand has conceded that electric sports coupes are not desirable and will need to stick with internal combustion engines for the foreseeable future.
The other key factor is the decision to build the X Gran Coupe and Convertible concepts on the same underpinnings as the G90 sedan; the brand’s flagship limousine, which is not sold in Australia. By utilising an existing platform, Donkerwolke said the business case changes dramatically by reducing development costs.
“It’s a prototype, fully functional,” he said. “The platform has not been touched, so it means it shows you that we can make a great coupe without modifying the platform, and that is already a big plus for the business case. If you don’t modify the platform to do the car, it’s a great win ’cause you are reducing the investment to the [top] hats, to the upper body. So I made sure when I was doing those cars, I was reusing the major investment of those vehicles.
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“Now talks are being made with all the regions. We have very positive resonance, very strong demand after having, let’s say, tried EV coupes and convertibles, we realize that people were not ready yet. So we said, ‘okay, well let’s take an existing platform and let’s make it clear’. And we noticed that there was absolutely no constraint, no compromise to be done in the design and the desirability of the product by taking the platform on the G90.”
The G90 is powered by a 305kW/549Nm twin-turbo V6 petrol engine, so it already has performance credentials, even if the long-wheelbase of the executive sedan means the X Gran Coupe and Convertible are larger-than-average sports car models.
Donkerwolke said the final hurdle for Genesis to conquer before putting these plans into production is getting feedback from individual global markets on potential demand. But the early feedback has been good, so Donkerwolke is confident.
“So I’m very positive and the next months will show the potential of the demand that we will get from the markets and then, I hope we have very soon good news about that,” he said.
“But you can believe that I will not let that go. Excellent. It’s been, as you say, there’s been numerous designs and the reason what I’m doing is because I will never give up on that.”
The news also opens the door for Genesis to expand its racing aspirations with a GT3 program. Speaking at the launch of the GMR-001 Hypercar livery, Genesis Magma Racing team principal Cyril Abiteboul, hinted that the company was interested in expanding its motorsport reach.
“ You know, when you enter into, when you do something like that, you want to build an ecosystem,” Abiteboul told Torquecafe. “It’s a platform and what is the business ecosystem around it? So we cannot confirm anything tonight, but obviously all, if we are successful with that, we hope that [there] will be customers for these cars. That’s what Ferrari is doing, for instance. For sure a derivative, a hot car derivative or racing derivative would be good. But to have a good GT3 racing car, you need also the right production car and that’s the first step we need to complete.”
If Donkerwolke gets his way, the X Gran Coupe could spawn both a production coupe and pave the way for Genesis Magma Racing to go GT3 racing by the end of the decade.
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