I never really understood the enormous car crash that Tiger Woods had in February. Sure, police say he was driving at more than 80mph when he lost control, but it was a wide road and he’s a thrusting young man with a thriving pant compass and a sharp mind so the speed shouldn’t have been a factor.
What’s more relevant is that he hit the central reservation and careered across the road before hitting a tree at what experts say was 75mph. So he obviously hadn’t braked very hard in the meantime. And then he rolled over several times before emerging from the wreckage with nothing more than a hurty leg. Like I say, it’s odd.
I never really understood the car he was driving either. We were told by local news teams in California that it was a “Genesis” and I assumed it was one of those idiotic offshoot brands, like Saturn, that General Motors dreams up in its forward strategy outreach deep-dive seminars. Why Genesis? Because Pink Floyd had their name fully legalled and Yes sounded weird.
I was wrong, though. Genesis is actually a South Korean invention, created by Hyundai to do what Lexus did for Toyota. And now, after some modifications to make it more suitable for European roads, it’s on sale in the UK.
I tried the top-of-the-range four-wheel-drive GV80 and it was immediately obvious what Hyundai has done. They’ve built a machine that looks very Bentlish, with lots of chrome on the outside and lots of soft leather on the inside, and they’re hoping that this aesthetic and tactile double whammy, along with the new name — Gong, was it? — will be enough to drag Euro businessmen out of their Audis and Volvos and BMWs and Mercedes.
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Don’t mock. Sure, Nissan failed miserably to pull off a similar trick with its Infiniti brand but at a cost of just eleventy trillion dollars, Toyota did make it work with Lexus. And Hyundai is on a roll at the moment. Some of their ordinary cars are extremely good and the hot N versions are absolutely brilliant. The new Barclay James Harvest GV80, though, isn’t. It’s a terrible car.
Mainly this is because they’ve given it something called “road preview technology”, which means that cameras scan the road surface ahead and when the electronic watchman notices a bump or a pothole coming along, he instructs the suspension to make sure the occupants don’t feel anything.
It simply doesn’t work. Even in “comfort” mode, this car rides like a light aircraft in a tropical thunderstorm, heaving and crashing and lurching on even smooth bits of tarmac. It’s not the most uncomfortable car I’ve ever driven because I’ve driven a Nissan GT-R Nismo, but it’s close. Certainly I’d keep a few sick bags in the glovebox, because if you have passengers on board you’re going to need them.
And to make matters worse it’s fitted with all the usual electronic claptrap designed to make sure you stay both on the road and legal. But whoever did the wiring has obviously never been to the Cotswolds.
The idea — and this isn’t new — is that it reads the white lines along the road ahead and if it thinks you’re straying into the wrong lane it’ll take control of the steering. In other cars it’s a mild intervention and consequently it’s only mildly annoying. But in the King Crimson GV80 it’s like Tyson Fury is on the other side of the steering column. And it drove me up the wall.
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On a narrowish country road it is nigh on impossible not to go near the grass verge or the white line, so Tyson is wrenching the wheel this way and that, and you’re being bounced around by the mad suspension and then, every time you break the speed limit by so much as 1mph, a vivid red warning light flashes in a head-up display on the windscreen. So I was doing 51mph on a road I know well, and it felt like I was taking part in a display with the Red Arrows. Exhausting doesn’t even begin to cover it.
After a little while I had to do something I’ve never done before: pull over, find my specs and spend some time working out how all the electric health and safety could be turned off. There was nothing to be done about the turbulent suspension, but eventually I shut down the speed warnings and the dashboard-mounted Tyson Fury. Which meant I completed the journey to my destination in a car that was simply horrible, rather than completely unbearable.
Half an hour later, though, I set off on the journey home and couldn’t believe it. The car had turned all the safety features back on. Have you ever heard a cow after its calf has been taken away? It’s the sound of misery and despair, and it’s the exact noise I made when the steering wheel started fighting me again.
Not that long ago Hyundai launched an executive car in Britain called the Hyundai Genesis. Then they quietly dropped it, having sold just 50 examples. It was a sales disaster and I think the GV80 will do even worse.
There was a four-cylinder petrol unit in my test car that was very unpowerful. But at least it was also quite carbon dioxidy. I’m told the diesel is better, but who wants a diesel these days?
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I suppose at this point I should tell you about the rear-facing cameras that feed an image to the dash of what’s alongside the car when you turn on the indicators. I guess these mean you’re less likely to hit Jeremy Vine when turning left. But I think on balance I’d rather have a Volvo and use my mirrors. I trust mirrors. Apart from the one in my bathroom, which lies every morning.
The problem is that Hyundai’s trying to do something it’s not really equipped to do. A company like this trying to make an Audi-type luxury car is like McDonald’s trying to make a gourmet dinner or me deciding to write about classical music or Ferrari trying to sell hats. Actually, scratch that. Ferrari does sell hats.
Hyundai’s first car, assembled back in the Sixties under licence from Ford, was a left-hand-drive Cortina. And then they hired a bunch of former British Leyland bods who, being Midlanders, didn’t understand the rhyming-slang problems of calling a car the Pony. But this simple, no-nonsense machine overcame the “and trap” issue to become the bedrock on which the South Korean operation grew. And grew. And grew, until it enveloped Kia and became the third-largest carmaker in the world. And now they’ve decided that they want to make eggs to take on Fabergé. It hasn’t worked.
But the brief time I did spend with the Jethro Tull did help me explain why Tiger Woods failed so comprehensively to slow down once he knew a crash was imminent. I had a similar feeling as I was driving it: “Please, God, let it end.”
Write to us at driving@sunday-times.co.uk or Driving, The Sunday Times, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
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The Clarksometer
Genesis GV80 2.5T 8AT AWD
Engine
2497cc, 4 cylinders, turbo, petrol
Power
300bhp @ 5800rpm
Torque
311 Ib ft @ 1650rpm
Acceleration
0-62mph: 7.7sec
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Top speed
147mph
Fuel / CO2
25.3mpg / 241g/km
Weight
2,145kg
Price
£59,600
Release date
On sale now
Jeremy’s rating
★
Head to head
Genesis GV80 2.5T 8AT AWD v Audi Q7 S Line 55 TFSI quattro tiptronic
Price
Genesis: £59,600
Audi: £61,600
Power
Genesis: 300bhp
Audi: 335bhp
0-62mph
Genesis: 7.7sec
Audi: 5.9sec
Top speed
Genesis: 147mph
Audi: 155mph
