Hyundai Accelerates Genesis Into Its Own Luxury Brand

Car brands are not born every day. Some of us remember a period in the late 1980s where GM created Saturn and Honda begat Acura, followed by Toyota and Nissan bringing us Lexus and Infiniti, respectively. More recently, Toyota made Scion a low-budget (and still fledgling) thing and Tesla electrified the world with its own bad self. It’s a rare undertaking, risking billions of dollars up front and requiring decades of commitment to succeed.

So today’s news that Hyundai is spinning its Genesis nameplate into a whole separate luxury brand is a rather big deal.

To car wags, this is interesting, though not terribly surprising, since Hyundai’s current Genesis sedan is, by all accounts, the real luxury car deal, fully able to hold its head up high against luxury car stalwarts like the Lexus GS, Mercedes-Benz E-Class, and Audi A6. To outsiders, however, it may be confounding that a company known for bargain products will offer a full line of luxury cars under their own moniker.

Chris Hosford, Hyundai’s U.S. spokesman, cited three points in support of separating the Genesis name. Hyundai has spent seven years selling in the luxury space with the Genesis sedan and, higher up the ladder, the limo-like Equus. The new Genesis sedan ranks in the top three sellers in its segment. And: “The customers have told us they wanted this brand. They say, ‘I want the Genesis badge.’ Some Genesis customers have been re-badging their cars as Genesis on their own.”

Hyundai is promising six Genesis-branded models by 2020, all of which will be built on rear-wheel-drive underpinnings and are expected to feature styling elements previewed by the gorgeous Hyundai Vision G Coupe concept car Hyundai trotted out to the Pebble Beach Concours weekend earlier this year. According to Hosford, the first new Genesis model will be its flagship sedan, the G90, which replace the palatial Hyundai Equus sometime toward the middle of 2016. The new super-lux sedan will initially be sold through the 400 or so Hyundai dealers currently authorized to sell the Equus in the U.S.