We lucky hacks get a passenger’s insight into the agility and chuckability of this instantly desirable rear-wheel-drive coupe. Photo Gallery
A sort of phosphorus avocado green flash screeches out of the dark hanger at Hunter Valley Airport.
It’s a car that’s not supposed to be in this country.
Yet only days after its sibling appeared at the Melbourne Motor Show, here’s another Hyundai Genesis, with a guttural 231kW/361Nm 3.8-litre V6 aboard. This one isn’t pristine and stationary on a podium.
No, this one’s laying a gust of burning rubber. A black-clad, impenetrably visored driver Hyundai are cheekily calling ”The Stag” peels what is by leagues of magnitude the most exciting car to emerge from Korea through a course of orange cones set up on the runway’s apron.
We lucky hacks get a passenger’s insight into the agility and chuckability of this instantly desirable rear-wheel-drive coupe.
With production underway in left-hand-drive only the Genesis is available in cack-hand territories. In the US - where’s it’s very much a competitor for the Infiniti G37 coupe that Nissan Australia will not bring here (it’s a grey import favourite) - the Hyundai is winning raves and awards.
So it seems an act of unusual cruelty to torture poor fellows with a tantalising taste of a toy we won’t have the chance to play with it.
Or will we?
“One thing I’ve learned in four-and-a-half years at Hyundai is never say never,” senior communications manager Ben Hershman told Carsguide.
“This is why we bought them here. They’re our cars. We’re going to do a series of promotions like this to gauge reaction.”
As to Australia’s realistic expectations of getting the Genesis, Hershman says: “We weren’t going to get the i20 (city car) either and now we’re launching it here later this year.”
Frankly, we must have this car. Not only does it look and sound stirring to a disturbing degree, no-one’s bringing anything quite like it to our part of the world.
And if Hyundai could price it at WRX or Ralliart money, or even not to the distant north of that, they would surely sell each and every one they could source.
