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Genesis designer Luc Donckerwolke talks new sedan, 'post-SUV' phase

Luc Donckerwolke's office at the Hyundai Research and Design center outside of Seoul looks like an Apple store, all polished concrete, metal and glass and a Miesian lack of ornamentation. This makes sense in an environment in which Donckerwolke, as head of design for the Hyundai and Genesis brands, is attempting to privilege transparency: enhancing communication and accessibility. "We have to break this kind of castle syndrome that the designers are in," Donckerwolke says. "It's all about opening up." This undermining of Korea's traditional orchestrated, hierarchical and executory structure is part of what has allowed Donckerwolke to create widely admired concepts such as the GV80 SUV and Essentia electric GT in just more than two years since he arrived from the VW Group leading design at Bentley, Lamborghini and Audi. And also to design the all-new G70 sport sedan that will be introduced to the U.S. market later this summer. We drove the G70 just before arriving for an exclusive one-on-one at Donckerwolke's R&D office, the first American journalists to visit. Although our time behind the wheel was brief, and we drove only the top-of-the-line, 365-horsepower, twin-turbocharged V6 version, we were impressed with the acceleration, the balance and the material quality. We also noted that the G70 is very good looking, with a distinctive, muscular and aggressive mien that feels true to the company's mission to be at once "Audacious, Progressive and Distinctly Korean." Like much of what we saw and experienced in contemporary Seoul, the car hosts a unique blend of influences from America, Europe and Asia while offering a harmony of line and a grounded sense of self that seems endemic to the peninsula. This global-but-flavored template is intentional. "We are not going to do Korean cartoons on wheels," Donckerwolke says. "We're not going to become a patriotic Korean movement. It's only about the essence of the Korean culture that we are using as an inspiration." One thing we could not help but notice is that the G70 is a sedan, joining a pair of older, Hyundai-based sedans, the G80 and G90, to complete the Genesis lineup. This feels somewhat inauspicious in the moment, especially for the American market where two-thirds of new-vehicle purchases are trucks and SUVs. "As you probably have seen when you've been driving around, sedans are extremely demanded here in Korea. And, you know, we have a huge market penetration here.

Hyundai crashes two Sonatas in public to prove a point about safety

According to The Korean Car Blog, Hyundai has a quality perception gap in the minds of its domestic customers, but it's not with another brand: some South Koreans think US-market Hyundai products are safer than those sold in South Korea. For example, home-market consumers think the US gets more advanced airbag systems than they do. Hyundai decided that the best way to combat that idea was to ram two 2015 Sonata 2.0 Turbos into one another, each one traveling at 34 miles per hour, in front of a live audience. From what we can glean from a Google-translated version of the backstory, the company had a local university professor secure two vehicles, a Lakeside Blue model from South Korea and a Venetian Red model manufactured in the company's US plant and flown over. It invited buyers of the 30th Anniversary Sonata and members of the local media to a drive-in movie premiere on August 22, the show actually being the crash test. In addition to the two Sonatas that would autonomously throw themselves at one another, the company had a Tucson Fuel Cell use its hydrogen fuel cell stack to make popcorn and 119 various emergency vehicles emergency services on standby in case anything went wrong. When guests were asked which car they thought would fare better, 74 percent of the crowd said the US-spec car. In interviews conducted on the street, 81 percent of respondents said they believe the US car is safer. The video above is in Korean, but car crashes are a universal language. Check it out to see which car comes out better.

Hyundai Mid-Engine Hatchback Spied | Autoblog Minute

Is this Hyundai's first N performance car? Possible production Hyundai mid-engine hatch spied testing at Nurburgring.