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Genesis cars win accolades, offer value — so why are sales so bad?

My high-school buddy Brent Cormier was so smitten with the Genesis G80 when he saw it at an event I hosted at SXSW in 2016 he bought a used 2013 Hyundai Genesis a short time later and fell in love with the car. "It surpasses my every expectation," said Cormier, a self-described "renaissance man" who owns and runs a real estate agency with his wife Laura, is a food service executive chef and part owner of Austin-based Thin the Herd Guitars. "I was locked into Mercedes and Audi for 10 years," he added. "And felt trapped in an endless pit of maintenance costs." After owning the Genesis over the past two years — including using it as an Uber and Lyft driver to earn extra cash — Cormier learned what some frugal luxury sedan buyers and a handful of car reviewers have discovered: Genesis offers great bang for the buck compared to other premium brands and can compete with the best in terms of performance, features and comfort. Hyundai's luxury brand also earned a prominent third-party endorsement last week when for the first time Genesis topped J.D. Power's 2018 APEAL study, surpassing German luxury-performance icon Porsche. The APEAL study (which stands for Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout) "measures owners' emotional attachment and level of excitement across 77 attributes," ranging from performance to comfort, and asks nearly 68,000 owners of new 2018 models to score vehicles on a 1,000-point scale. In its second year ranked as a stand-alone brand, Genesis earned an APEAL score that bumped it up 15 points to 884 and helped push it past Porsche — and past BMW, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Volvo, Cadillac, Land Rover and Lexus, in order of ranking. Last month, Genesis also topped J.D. Power's Initial Quality Survey (IQS) for the first time this year. And both its models were awarded Top Safety Pick Plus ratings by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, among 11 Plus ratings in all for Korean vehicles. Despite high J.D. Power rankings and great reviews, Genesis U.S. sales were off 50 percent for the first six months of 2018 compared to 2017, and in June Genesis sold only 796 vehicles — the first time U.S. numbers dropped below 1,000 in a month. Part of Genesis's APEAL and IQS success can be attributed to its small product lineup: just two models, the G80 and G90 sedans, with a third, the 2019 G70, launching later this year. And while those numbers may help in J.D.

Lexus customizes 10 cars as characters from 'Eternals'

Lexus has vanda — uh, customized — ten cars to go along with "Eternals," the latest movie in the Marvel cinematic universe. Each vehicle has been chosen to represent one of ten heroes from the story, wrapped in colorful designs that Lexus says reflect their costumes and powers. We suppose that if you're an immortal being that needs to be embodied in automotive form, a Lexus isn't a bad choice given their reputation for long-term reliability. But, if you've been living among Earthlings for 7,000 years and are trying to lay low, maybe a brightly colored car with gold underglow isn't the most effective stealth mode. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Some of the cars are quite appropriate. Thena, incarnated as a white and gold Lexus LC500, seems like a perfect embodiment of Angelina Jolie's character's power and elegance. Similarly, the red RC F Track Edition representing Makkari, played by Lauren Ridloff, is a good fit for what is described as the fastest Eternal. And the hulking Land Cruiser-based Lexus LX570 makes a good Gilgamesh, played by Don Lee, the biggest and strongest of the bunch. However, we then get into questionable territory when Phastos is also represented by a second LX570 because, per Lexus, "The LX is technologically advanced, making it an ideal fit for Phastos, played by Brian Tyree Henry, the technological guru of the team." Uh, okay. That claim would make more sense if the SUV was a 2022 Lexus LX600, but images show the Phastos car based on a current-gen LX, which is 14 years old. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. We don't know enough about the rest of the "Eternals" characters to know if the cars are fitting, but for the sake of completion, here we go. Salma Hayek's Ajak and Barry Keoghan's Druig are represented by Lexus GX460s, Richard Madden's Ikaris is a Lexus LS sedan, Gemma Chan's Sersi is a non-Track Edition RCF, Lia McHugh's Sprite is a Lexus NX, and Kumail Nanjiani's Kingo is an IS350. Again, that last one is an odd choice since Nanjiani drove an IS500 in a recent ad (that also features a pretty cool looking right-hand-drive Mitsubishi Pajero). "Eternals" opens on November 5, 2021. The Lexus cars will be used at promotional events and at the red carpet premiere. It is the second time Lexus has been the official car of a Marvel movie, following 2018's Black Panther.

Genesis wins J.D. Power Tech Experience Study for third straight time

The results are out for the J.D. Power 2023 U.S. Tech Experience Index (TXI) Study, which "focuses on the user experience with advanced vehicle technology as it first comes to market and is an early measure of problems encountered by vehicle owners." Its measurement metric is problems per 100 vehicles (PP100), same as with the J.D. Power Initial Quality Study (IQS). The takeaway this year isn't that owners aren't using advanced technologies, as was the case with the 2022 study, or that they're having more problems with them overall. It's that owners of battery-electric vehicles are having more problems with advanced tech than owners of ICE-powered vehicles. According to the study, 17 of 21 features that can be had on both propulsion types — such as remote parking assistance and gesture controls — get lower satisfaction ratings by owners of BEVs, in some cases nearly 20 PP100.  The survey organization says this tracks with what its found in the IQS, where total vehicle problems were "46% higher among BEVs (excluding Tesla) than ICE vehicles and satisfaction is lower among owners of BEVs across nine of 10 APEAL categories than among owners of ICE vehicles." Findings regarding biometric measurements are among those that go against the overall study findings. Whether a fingerprint reader or an eye tracker, car owners in general said "they do not consider them to be useful." In terms of ease-of-use and satisfaction, plug-and-charge capability on EVs gets good marks. This allows EV owners to plug into a public charger and have payment taken care of automatically; the vehicle communicates with any charging station compatible with an automaker's plug-and-play system, so the vehicle can automatically submit a bill for the charging session to a central owner account with no further action needed at the station. Survey respondents noted a mere 6 PP100 and an 88.9% satisfaction.    Among manufacturers, repeat winners took the top prizes. Genesis earned the highest rank for innovation overall and among premium brands for the third straight year. Hyundai not only won the tech innovation banner for mass market brands for the fourth straight year, ahead of Kia, GMC, Ram and Subaru, Hyundai finished in second in the overall standings. On that overall chart, the top five are Genesis, Hyundai, Cadillac, Lexus and BMW. On the premium chart, Genesis is followed by Cadillac, Lexus, BMW and Mercedes-Benz in the top five. It wasn't close from the first to the rest, though.