Gadgetory

it roughly competes with the Infiniti M the BMW 5-series and the Mercedes II 550 no pressure there let's jump in the 2012 Hyundai Genesis sedan 5 liter r-spec and check the tech now from the outside there's nothing terribly exciting about the Genesis sedan nothing bad about it either it's kind of like a more evolved Camry and I don't mean that as a backhand compliment it doesn't have a lot of aero kit stuff bulging fender wells staggered wheel sizes or any of the typical cues of an AMG or an M car but that's okay because it doesn't want to play at that lofty level now the first thing I say when I get into the cabin of the Genesis is it's quite simple it's kind of restrained part of that is because they're competing with some very elaborate cars at a much lower price point and here's your standard heading on all these five liter r-spec cars that's an 8 inch color LCD it's not touch it's all operated by this controller here which is kind of in the I drive Audi MMI family as you can see the map resolution is really good and even when i zoom well in i'm going to get really nice tight dot resolution very good fonts on the actual street names themselves but most folks are is going to enter an address you can do that of course a couple of ways you can go to this navigation menu right here or you can use voice command right here on the wheel let's see how well it works as you can see I've got a tel stupid that I'm in the navigation command mode even though I hit the voice button while I was in navigation that's a huge fail now the other issue I've got with this guy is this weird mishmash of back commands back commands are critical in a car when you want to go back in your crumb trail to where you were there's a back button here but it doesn't always take you back so if I go to the radio settings here for example and I want to go to some settings and I go over here and I play with my tone controls and then I want to go back to this menu on the left you would think the back button would take me there but it only gets me half way there then I've got to go do something different to go continuing back to this menu and that is used a knob to go left so it's a weird mix of back button and left kick on the knob and you never really know which is which another problem here very complicated mess of buttons there's map and guide on one button and this navigation and menu on another button I don't get it now in terms of driver assistance tech this car is kind of low tech high tech there's no blind spot technology available for you but there is a button over here for lane departure warning it is an advanced technology but it's a warning it's not the kind that gets in the way and will actually get you back in your lane so it's kind of a middle the warning comes through beeps in the car and I think it Yanks on the seat belt kind of judders the belt as opposed to some cars that will shake the wheel others will shake the seat same thing goes for parking there's no automatic parking technology available on this car you've got a nice rear-view camera but it doesn't do anything particularly novel it doesn't show trajectory it just gives you some distance markings and sub curb lines but again it's stuck as our bumper sensors around the vehicle as you expect in this car one choice only on the gearbox not a manual transmission that's not where this fits this 8-speed automatic is pretty impressive that's a lot of gears and again that's going to be very much at the top of the stack with the number of cogs you're going to get a transmission these days and as we're going to see on the road it works pretty well Hyundai's Day I'm proud of this motor and it's a big boy you know that's come in a long way from what Hyundai used to stand for a few years ago it's a five liter v8 it's gotten awards for being just a really beautifully engineered motor and the numbers are good 429 horsepower 376 foot-pounds of torque notice the big drop off there in those two numbers because this guy is a direct injection motor but there are no superchargers or turbochargers as I mentioned direct injection is a big part of how they get so much power out of it but also how they get pretty good mpg this 4,100 pound car goes to 16 little over 5 seconds while still delivering 1726 epa rating now while this car competes with some german brands that offer a lot of optional or even standard all-wheel drive doesn't happen here on the genesis again part of the cost containment strategy rear wheel drive only and as you can see the engines mounted traditionally longitudinally with plenty of it in front of the axle line right here you know when you're a car like this competing with some serious German and established Asian competition you've got to do the basics right first and I can report the Genesis does that very high refine ride quality even they've got a sports suspension it biases more toward comfort then towards sport that may disappoint you if you're looking for some kind of a bargain AMG ride but at this price you couldn't get there along those lines the suspension of course doesn't communicate back that much Road the steering doesn't either it's going to be more of a comfortable responsive car than an extremely performance oriented car the engine even under full load never gets to any weird grinding notes that's another important win they've got to do here because that doesn't sound like performance usually it generally just sounds like cheap when an engine degrades into ugly noises now this lane-departure technology the switch over here only works at 43 miles an hour and above according to Hyundai that leaves out a lot of driving where you don't get the assistance of it I do find though that it's pretty well calibrated in terms of when it picks up the line and decides to alert you a lot of cars don't do all that well but it doesn't start till a relatively high speed now speaking of getting up to speed that's one thing this car does really well in its cruiser fashion I'm here on a twisty road in what is a big car with a pretty good amount of pounds on the hoof 4100 as I mentioned and it has no problem getting up out of its own way that's because it makes its power vs pretty straightforward displacement and precise injection as opposed to any turbo chargers or blower in there which tend to introduce a little bit of delay in some this car goes after the luxury brands at a lower price and nails the basics in that alone it's quite appealing but if you really want to go high-tech II seen that style you're gonna be finding some key stuff missing okay pricing in Genesis five liter r-spec is kind of a simple procedure it's 47:4 delivered with the technology you see and that's the technology you get you can't take this thing any further seen that style with options cuz there ain't Dani now the picture as I've shown you is one of kind of a middle ground glass is half empty and half full in terms of the kinds of tech and the sophistication of but you have to like this car as delivered