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dipulb3 · 4 years ago

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2021 Genesis GV80 first drive review: Splashy, sumptuous and special SUV

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2021 Genesis GV80 first drive review: Splashy, sumptuous and special SUV

Have you ever come across one of those fantastical news stories of somebody who randomly wakes up with the ability to play piano? You know, a person whose fingers suddenly and magically master classical sonatas, having never so much as stumbled through Chopsticks previously? I’ve always been suspicious of those accounts, but this 2021 Genesis GV80 is making me reconsider. Why? Because with exactly zero experience building true luxury SUVs, this Korean upstart seems to have nailed the brief right out of the box. This is a harmonious, fully realized midsize crossover with its own appeal — one ready to rub shoulders with Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz at the front of the pack.

Admittedly, the Genesis isn’t an overnight sensation, let alone some sort of unknown startup. The brand is built on Hyundai’s considerable shoulders, and Hyundai has been fielding convincing Genesis sedans for years, as well as some awfully good mass-market sport utilities. But this GV80 isn’t just Genesis’ first SUV, it’s the parent company’s first unibody crossover built on rear-wheel-drive architecture, too. But just because Genesis is belatedly arriving to the ball doesn’t mean it’s content to be a wallflower.

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On the contrary, all you need to do is take one look at the GV80’s massive, Superman-shield-shaped grille or its distinctive double-hashmark lighting to know that this SUV isn’t looking to slip in the side door and mingle unnoticed. The top-shelf Prestige trim seen here rides on massive 22-inch Michelin Primacy Tour all-season rubber, and the rest of the vehicle’s details and proportions really suit being fitted with oversized wheels. Even lesser trims start out on still-large 19 inchers. For better or for worse, the 2021 Genesis GV80 is a seriously unsubtle piece of design, and even if it’s not your thing, there’s little doubt that it looks expensive and that it has serious curb presence.

Whether you use the traditional fob or the available digital, sharable phone key to open the door, you’ll find that the GV80’s gravitas carries over to its cabin. The cockpit is swathed in all manner of upscale materials and finishes, including substantial planks of matte-finish wood and knurled switchgear that looks and feels premium. Prestige trims like this one ladle on lots of extra niceties, including a suede-like headliner and very trick 3D-effect all-digital gauge cluster (the latter is an industry first).

Then there’s the 14.5-inch widescreen infotainment system with its high resolution and sparkling graphics. It’s perched atop the dash like a billboard, but thanks to its ultra-long span and the gentle curvature of the gauge binnacle, this display doesn’t look like a tacked-on afterthought. Manipulated via touchscreen or a large jog wheel with integrated directional click ring (not unlike iPods of yore) and a center handwriting recognition pad, the GV80’s infotainment system is new and powerful, yet it’s surprisingly easy to get accustomed to its tile-based layout.

Thankfully, there’s plenty of room inside, too. The 194.7-inch-long GV80 rides atop a 116.3-inch wheelbase, which affords ample head-, shoulder- and legroom in both the first and (slidable and reclinable) second row. Yes, a power-folding third row is available, but only on a single upper-midrange trim with the larger engine. With the way this plus-two setup eats into cargo space while only offering tight seating accommodations, I’d recommend sticking with a two-row model.

For those keeping track, cargo space behind the optional third row is a modest 11.6 cubic feet. Space behind the second row is a more substantial 33.9 cubes, and if you fold all the seats behind the front row, you’re looking at 84 cubic feet, a figure that edges out the Mercedes GLE-Class and trounces the BMW X5.

The cabin is a special place with its own sense of style and lo tech. That two-spoke rugby-ball wheel is controversial, though.

Chris Paukert/Roadshow

If you’re looking for another good reason to skip the third row, try this: You can’t get my pick of the GV80’s range, the Prestige model. I seldom recommend splurging on a top trim, but it’s worth doing here for the added creature comforts, including Genesis’ novel Ergo Motion massaging front seats that can measure occupants to make posture recommendations. The latter are clad in higher-quality, quilted Nappa leather and are comfy enough that you might decide to lounge in your driveway, just to get the chance to listen to the high-fidelity, 21-speaker Lexicon surround-sound audio. What’s more, select highline models are also treated to an adaptive multilink suspension front and rear that includes a road-reading camera to optimize the dampers for any surface in advance — with those heavy 22-inch steamrollers at each corner, you’ll want whatever tech assistance you can get to smooth out the ride.

Pro tip: When ordered in more unusual color combinations like Maroon Brown with Smokey Green leather, the GV80’s cabin feels premium and often more luxurious than what’s offered by comparable German and Japanese rivals such as the Audi Q7, BMW X5, Mercedes GLE and Lexus RX. In fact, this Genesis compares well against less-popular class picks like the Lincoln Aviator and Volvo XC90, both of which are perhaps better known for their stunning interiors than they are for anything else.

All of this is to say that not only is the GV80 luxurious and precisely assembled, it looks and feels both original and special, as well as appreciably high-tech. If there are any false notes, they’re small crimes of omission — Apple CarPlay and Android Auto aren’t offered wirelessly, and you can’t get a Wi-Fi hotspot or rear-seat entertainment. That two-spoke rugby-ball steering wheel is a bit of an odd throwback, too, but at least it’s distinct.

The GV80’s 14.5-inch infotainment system is snappy and feature rich, with both touchscreen and jog-dial interfaces.

Chris Paukert/Roadshow

If you’re looking for a fire-breathing sport utility with more of an emphasis on the former than the latter, the GV80 is not your ride — at least not right now. At launch, there will be two engines available: a turbocharged, 2.5-liter four-cylinder and a twin-turbo 3.5-liter V6, both yoked to an obedient eight-speed automatic transmission. The I4 is available in both rear- and all-wheel-drive formats, and it puts out 300 horsepower and 311 pound-feet of torque. While my brief drive time in the I4 suggests it’s up to the job, it’s the V6 powertrain I’ve spent the most time with, so it’s the combination I’m going to focus on for this review.

That’s just as well, because with a vehicle that’s as bold and brash as this, choosing the burliest powertrain only seems fitting. Plus, the GV80 is no lightweight — a base RWD 2.5T is over 4,500 pounds, and an all-mod-cons 3.5T with mandatory AWD like this one tips the scales at around 5,000 pounds. The V6 has 375 hp and 391 lb-ft of torque, enough to sling this sled to 60 mph in 5.7 seconds.

That time won’t throw a scare into a BMW X5 sDrive40i owner, let alone an X5 M pilot, but that’s just fine. The GV80 handles sharply and the suspension setup is on the firm side regardless of drive mode setting, but this Genesis isn’t a hot-rod wagon on stilts like a Mercedes-AMG GLE63. The GV80 feels powerful, but it’s still a coddle-me-first, thrill-me-second proposition. From its muted growl at full throttle to its supple, direct steering and easy-to-modulate brakes, the GV80 is a zen cocoon. This is a vehicle that knows and embraces its mission for balanced, total luxury, and it’s unexpectedly excellent for exactly that reason.

The GV80 offers a third row, but this SUV is at its best in a five-seat configuration.

Chris Paukert/Roadshow

None of this is to say that GV80’s big six feels lazy. Yes, it’s super quiet on the inside owing to active road-noise cancellation tech, laminated glass and all kinds of sound-deadening materials. But the V6 sounds better on the outside, and more importantly, it’s got the power to underscore those looks. In fact, it’s worth noting that while both powertrains are rated to tow 6,000 pounds, the twin-turbo setup helps the 3.5-liter’s torque peak kick in earlier and hang around longer (1,300 to 4,500 rpm) than the less-expensive four-cylinder (1,650 to 4,000 rpm), which should help be an even more effective towing partner. For my money, it’d be great if Genesis were eventually to offer an even-more-powerful V8 or hybrid model to match the Germans — the chassis is up to it.

That said, if there’s an Achilles heel with the GV80’s performance, it’s fuel economy. Of course, that’s a problem shared by every model in this class — at least those without hybrid assist. An entry-level RWD 2.5T rings up at 25 miles per gallon city, 21 highway and 23 combined. A loaded AWD 3.5T like this Prestige is rated at 23 mpg city, 18 highway and 20 combined. These are unimpressive figures — especially on premium fuel — but they’re wholly competitive for this class.

If you’re looking for more pleasing numbers, I’d suggest checking out pricing. The GV80 range starts at under $50,000 delivered for a 2.5T RWD — picking up right where Hyundai’s excellent Palisade Calligraphy SUV leaves off. Yes, the Lexus RX is slightly cheaper for starters, but it’s also smaller, less powerful and less luxurious. The Germans? They’re all more expensive. Just over $60K will get you into a base 3.5T AWD.

At around $72,000, the loaded GV80 Prestige isn’t cheap, but this Korean-built SUV is both a strong value and excellent overall.

Chris Paukert/Roadshow

At the other end of the range, my pick, the loaded-up Prestige with all-wheel drive and the big engine rings up just shy of $72,000 (including $1,025 delivery). To be sure, that’s a lot of money, but it’s far, far cheaper than a comparable European. Besides, I think I even prefer the way the GV80 feels overall.

No matter which trim you opt for, there’s a full suite of advanced driver assist systems in the mix. Forward collision with auto-brake, lane-departure warning and blind-spot assist are standard, as is a driver monitor. The Prestige trim comes bundled with with Highway Driving Assist II, which includes lane centering, sign recognition and even automated lane changes, as well as Remote Smart Park Assist, which allows drivers to park in tight spots while standing outside their vehicle. These features are also available as part of two driving assistance packages on lesser models.

It’s 100% true that Hyundai miscalculated where the market was going when it chose to launch its new premium Genesis brand with three sedans, just as consumers were jumping the passenger-car ship in favor of SUVs. But at least Genesis was smart enough to realize that if you’re gonna be late to the utility-vehicle party, you’ve got to come hard with swag and substance. The automaker’s first stab at the genre has both, and while it’s far from an overnight sensation, this 2021 Genesis GV80 has the goods to shock luxury buyers — and more than a few car companies — with its all-around excellence.

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tillxthexearthxstartsxtoxcrumble · 1 year ago

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#they played west coast smoker for the first time and i wasnt there.#are you kidding me.#fob #fall out boy #fob8 #tourdust #tourdust spoilers #fob magic 8 ball #fob magic eight ball #fob live #fob tour #fall out boy live #fall out boy tour #magic 8 ball #magic eight ball #west coast smoker

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aymethyst · 1 year ago

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Pete: let’s try it again. Should we play… an old B-side?

Magic Eight Ball: Without a doubt

The (After) Life of the Party (July 3rd) Magic Eight Ball song

#so much for tour dust #fob #fall out boy #mine #magic eight ball #life of the after party #pete wetnz

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encountersincamperland · 6 years ago

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What’s In A Name?

Have you heard about the hurricane? asked the young Portuguese man as we approached the entrance of the campsite. We had just walked up the steep hill from Sesimbra port after our day exploring the town’s impressive hill top castle and pleasing seaside resort, and we were still puffing a bit - or at least I was.

No, we said in unison.

Hurricane Leslie is heading right here. Portugal is on red alert, said his girlfriend.

What, all of it? I thought. This must be a whopper.

The two were standing next to packed-up rucksacks and looked as if they were waiting for a lift.

We are not staying. The campsite manager told us we might not be safe in our tent with the strong winds, she said.

Up to a hundred and twelve miles an hour, he added.They were both wide-eyed and as eager to give us the news as to get off the campsite.

The young man was working his fingers over his phone as he explained, I’m trying to get us a room in town for the night.

We’re in a campervan, you said, so we should be alright.

I wasn’t so sure. The word hurricane unnerved me. There had been several recent weather events that had hit the headlines, including flash floods in Mallorca, the woman blown off a cliff top into the sea in her caravan in Galway and

Hurricane Michael in Florida. We both knew the destructive power of the weather and that it should not be underestimated.

But Hurricane Leslie? Would it be so powerful? The name made me think of Leslie Philips, of Carry On fame, and I couldn’t quite take it seriously as a name for a ravenous hurricane. He always seemed quite hapless, in those ludicrously letchy comedies of their day, always distracted from a task in hand by some gorgeous and unattainable woman passing by, and uttering his catchphrase, ‘Ding dong!’ to signal his desire.

Thanks for letting us know and good luck finding a room, you said to the young couple, and we walked up the the terrace bar for a drink, mulling over what we had just heard.

All was calm and quiet in the bar, apart from the ubiquitous tv giving weather reports we could not understand; but the night was drawing in fast and the wind was making the corrugated plastic roof and sides of the outside seating area flex with a nerve-jangling noise that made me and the campsite cats jumpy.

What do you think? I asked. Should we come off the site for the night too and try and get a room in town?

I don’t think we need to do that, you said. We’ll pull the pop-up roof down and secure the side tent as much as we can. We’ll be fine. The terrace we’re on is not at the very top and it has some shelter.

What if it gets really bad in the night and we have to get out? I said in my worse-case-scenario voice.

We’ll go to the toilet block, you said calmly. That’s made of stone and not going anywhere. We can sit out the night there. Rodin’s thinker came to mind but I dismissed it as a frivolous thought. I did not relish the idea of a night in the loos but saw the sense of it if absolutely necessary.

I went down to the campsite office to see if they had any advice to impart to the campers who were staying. The woman in the office looked at a loss when I asked her. I’ve only been here since June, she said. And this has never happened before. It’s an historic event to have a hurricane hit Portugal. If you don’t feel safe up on the pitches, you are welcome to come down lower or go off the site as you wish.

Will you leave anything open down here for shelter, I asked her, in case of an emergency?

No, she said. I’m locking up at eleven and going home. Good luck, she said.

Obrigada, I responded, not really feeling it.

We didn’t have a second drink in case we needed to have our wits about us later on. We ascended to our cliff-edge terrace with a view of the sea (in daylight) and you gathered large rocks to weigh down the tent as the ground was too hard for our tent pegs.

As you cooked and I tried to read my book (Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop, a dark tale of what a maelstrom growing up can be) the winds became stronger and the Bongo was buffeted from side to side.

You lowered the roof a little so the wind was not hitting taut sides.

I could feel adrenaline running through me but I was not really afraid, more excited at the thought of experiencing a hurricane. I had a sort of ‘bring it on’ attitude that I was pleased with. It reminded me of putting on a big show at school - not feeling it was ready and opening night descending fast. ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ is always my mantra for myself and others, and it was standing me in good stead in this circumstance too.

We ate and enjoyed the meal you cooked and shared a bottle of wine - the need to relax out-weighting concerns about having our wits in tact.

We cleared up quickly, made the bed up and pulled the roof fully down. It felt odd but comforting to have this tighter space about us, as if the Bongo’s metal sides were our armour against this marauding foe.

We had to leave our steel keep to use the facilities before settling down. I grasped your arm as we left the relative security of the campervan. We were immediately bullied by strong winds that seemed to surround us, howling taunts, snatching at our clothes and hair, pushing and pulling us as we struggled along the fifty meter stretch to the toilet block.

Once inside the white stone building, the winds relented momentarily but I could hear them prowling around and slipping under doors and through gaps in this airy space.

Our ablutions completed, we made our way back. No one else in the sparsely used site was about. Our nearest neighbour, a large motor home, was in darkness at the far end of the terrace. Its occupants, a Dutch couple, invisibly waiting to see what the night would bring.

We clambered into our narrow bed and hunkered down under the duvet, brought down the electric screens over the windows and you pressed the central locking fob. The satisfyingly heavy clunk of all the door locks falling into place in unison made me feel secure, as it had every night of our eight week journey. Come what may, we were well defended like the occupants of Sesimbra castelo long ago. Though our battlements were moulded steel on rubber wheels, we felt safe.

Surprisingly, we both fell asleep quickly and slept well. I woke around 3am when the hurricane should have been at its worst to find all was quiet. It seems Leslie had skirted over us and swerved north before landing thirty miles away above Lisbon, maybe distracted by a better looking piece of coastline.

The next morning we woke up to a beautiful day. I was so glad we had not wasted time and energy worrying about something that, although we had no control over, we had faced off by putting up our defences and were ready for whatever challenge it threw down.

This was a hurricane that had never really had firm intentions. It had been wandering lazily around the Atlantic before it spotted the Portuguese coast, and like a leery lothario, it came on to claim a conquest. It was not to be us, thankfully. It seemed as if Leslie had proved to be all bluster and no balls but we learned later that it had brought down many trees and took power out of thousands of homes but there were no fatalities that night.

Then, in the coming days, as if infuriated by being downgraded to a tropical storm, Leslie rampaged across Spain and into southern France’s Aude region where it caused flash flooding that took ten lives.

Hurricane Leslie, despite its innocuous name, proved to be deadly after all.

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anajaylis · 7 years ago

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Wednesday

I do one-time learning fairly well.

Well, okay, actually, I do it well enough that when one of my past employers, engaged in the obligatory character reference check, asked one of my even further past employers about me doing stupid shit, he was told “just point it out to her, she’ll stop”.

Flattering. But, as I realized this morning, true.

See, last week, I picked up a car from the motor pool to go over and wade through another six boxes at the archives, got to the car, and discovered that the auto-magical “press here to unlock” button on the car door handle wouldn’t work, even though I had the correct car door, because I didn’t have the key fob. I eventually got the key fob, of course, but it left a lasting enough impression that the very first thing I did after picking up a car from the motor pool this morning was flip open the binder to make sure the key fob was in it.

I will probably be doing a “key fob check” for the rest of my tenure with the agency.

I was privileged with a look at the outer vault of the archives, which is home to 73 shelf units, each shelf unit being eight shelves tall and holding boxes categorized A through Q (which works out to 9,928 boxes). This is not including the inner vault (pre-statehood and colonial records), or the other floors, or the other half of the vault, where the non-permanent storage is. My agency’s boxes, located in this outer vault, make up 15% of the whole. Once the index is finished, I hope to bring that down to, say, 5%. With any luck. (Seriously, my predecessors were that derelict about labeling things properly.)

And then I discovered that my building stores the copy paper in the bank vault in the sub-basement.

Seriously. Eight inch steel doors, the whole nine yards. Bank vault. Sub-basement. Storing the copy paper.

I don’t know why we have a bank vault in the sub-basement. The place used to be a school. And then for a while it housed the Governor’s Office in Exile (okay, fine, they were remodeling the Gov’s executive offices in the capital building and he needed a place to work, it just sounds cooler the other way). (The school bit is why we have a two-floor theater-seating auditorium in the basement. The Gov’s presence is why said auditorium is tricked out with microphones and podiums and a huge state seal; also, why our Fearless Leader’s office suite has an en suite shower, sink, and toilet.) None of which explains why we have a freakin’ bank vault in the sub-basement.

I’m pretty sure I know why they store the copy paper there, though. ‘cause if they didn’t, people like me would cheerfully half-inch it when the Official Channels proved slow at producing it.

Like this time. After four increasingly desparate and escalating (but polite!) e-mails, I finally resorted to ambushing the guy responsible for distribution, just to get two boxes. (In the mail-room. Politely. Kinda. “Paper! Please!”)

Anyway. Cowl. Technically I cast it on yesterday at lunch (with the Former Interweave Lawyer and the Tennis Champ, who deserted us for another agency, but still pops into our lives from time to time), then worked a few rows on the way home after I finished all the end-weaving on the sweater. But most of the progress is from today (in fact, everything but that deep blue bit at the outside edge). No idea how many stitches, except it’s a multiple of three, on US6s; and it’s my very last skein of Lion Brand’s Shawl in the Ball, colorway Soothing Blue. It’s for our most recently arrived lawyer, with whom I have not yet developed a fully telepathic working relationship (but we’re working on it).

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