Aiming High

Korea’s Premium Carmaker Enters a Fiercely Competitive Segment With Its G70. But Is the Rookie Compact Sports Saloon Good Enough to Take the Fight to the Old Hands?

- Sony Thomas

A new model trying to beat established players at their own game isn't anything new. No manufacturer in recent history would have done that more successfully than Toyota did with its 1989 Lexus LS400. Born as a result of the Chairman Eiji Toyoda’s desire to “build a car better than the best in the world,” the Lexus brand and its first model turned the luxury saloon market upside down and forced every player from Mercedes-Benz and BMW to Audi and Cadillac to up their game. Auto giant Hyundai’s dream of taking on past masters of the premium automobile market can be likened to the Lexus saga, although replicating the Japanese brand’s game-changing feat on a similar scale is going to be near impossible. Whether it is able to successfully shoulder the massive weight of expectations set by itself or not, there’s no denying that the latest model, the G70, is the most significant to wear the bewinged badge. While the larger G80 and G90 are really good ambassadors for the brand, they are technically successors of the Hyundai Genesis and the Centennial respectively. So technically, the G70 is the first ground-up newmodel under the Genesis brand.