Maybe my expectations were too high. I climbed into the Genesis G80 3.5T expecting great things; after all, the carmaker has been on something of a winning streak as of late, delivering excellent product after excellent product. The G70 sat near the top of the compact luxury sedan class even before the midlife facelift that made it more attractive; the G90 is a stellar example of the sort of luxo-barge perfect for long road trips; the GV80 feels like a Bentley Bentayga from T.J. Maxx; and while I haven’t driven the GV70 yet, I’ve heard nothing but good things.
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Further boosting my expectations: my colleague Tyler Duffy has only had positive things to say about his time with the 2021 G80, even though he spent his time with the turbocharged four-cylinder version, rather than the more potent twin-turbo V6 variant I’d be sampling.
So, upon embarking on a 300-mile journey from New York City to Vermont, I fully expected great things from this new Genesis. And indeed, at first, the car’s virtues shone through. The new engine is a beast, punching hard all through the midrange and pushing the car forward with more force than its quote 375 horsepower and 391 lb-ft would suggest. The crystal-clear digital instrument panel and the latest version of the Genesis infotainment system both pack excellent displays — crystal-clear as the nicest TVs you’ll see at Best Buy, and smooth and responsive to inputs via either touchscreen or the flush-mounted iDrive-like controller (not to be confused with the similar-looking rotary shifter right behind it, a mistake new owners will probably make once or twice before muscle memory sets in).
After a couple of hours, however, a couple of issues began to rear their heads. The lesser of them, a bit literally: the headroom is surprisingly lacking for such a big car. Not just in the rear, either; even up front, my hair was scraping the headliner. Granted, I like to sit relatively high up (better visibility that way), but even so, I’ve never had that sort of issue with a sedan in this size class before.
The bigger issue, though, is that the seats look much more comfortable than they actually are. While their buttery-soft leather looks and feels like like something out of an Aston Martin, their actual support is lacking. My partner’s glutes went numb after about two hours; by hour four, her legs had started tingling. I was luckier; I only suffered a case of numb butt on the way back to NYC (after three hours or so), but even that was enough to leave me limping out of the car. It’s not a matter of side bolsters poking into the legs, as with many a short, sporty car; rather, the bottoms of the seats themselves just seem ill-suited to long haul journeys.
That, in turn, pushes your feet into awkward positions that put the weight onto your heels in odd ways. Admittedly, I exacerbated the problem by wearing a pair of bulky Wolverine boots on the drive home that took up an inordinate part of the footwell — but the fact that footwear choice has to even be a factor to consider when driving a midsize sedan seems like the result of some less-than-ideal interior design choices.
