Some 15 years ago, there was this TV commercial where Charles Barkley stepped into a Hyundai Sonata and tried to sound all hard as he said, “You got a problem with that? I didn’t think so.” The goal was to intimidate us into respecting the Korean automobile manufacturer, but really all anybody could do was laugh. If the car could make an NBA star look phony, what would one of us look like driving one?
During this year’s Super Bowl, Hyundai took another shot at boosting its image, but this time the car was the star. The 30 seconds of watching that little coupe roast its rear tires around the apexes of Road Atlanta completely made up for the lackluster first half of the game. Every car enthusiast was thinking the same thing: “I wish I was the one driving that car right now.” But nobody wanted to say it out loud, because the stigma still exists.
For years, the sport compact community has been begging for an inexpensive RWD chassis. Honda’s S2000 and Nissan/Infiniti’s Z and G are all great cars, but none of them is really considered entry level. What we’ve wanted is something like the 240SX. More specifically, we would like a JDM Silvia version with a turbocharged engine, decent styling and a price point that leaves us with some extra cash for making modifications.
When the rumors started spreading that Hyundai was building exactly what we’d been asking for, most enthusiasts responded with a great deal of skepticism rather than celebration. If one of the big three Japanese manufacturers had built it, people would likely be placing deposits sight unseen. But for the Genesis Coupe, we wanted to see exactly what we were going to get before getting our hopes to high. Well, the specifications have finally been released and we have driven the various production versions. The car is now here, and our initial impressions are that it’s everything we’d hoped for and more.
So far there are twelve different option packages to choose from, starting at $22,000 for the base model and going north of $31,000 from there. But don’t be put off by the wide price range. The higher-priced version is a Grand Touring class car with a big V-6, automatic transmission, leather, moonroof, the works. If you’re looking for something like a G37, then by all means it is worth checking out. But it’s the base model with the turbocharged four-cylinder that really has us excited.
The engine comes from the Global Engine Manufacturing Alliance, a joint venture between Chrysler, Mitsubishi and Hyundai. While there are slight differences in valvetrain, block reinforcement and piston profiles, the Genesis’ 2-liter, four-cylinder engine is virtually identical to the 4B11 found in the EVO X. It even has a Mitsubishi TD04H series turbocharger, which according to Hyundai, is capable of producing 15 psi of boost. The claimed output of 210 bhp on 87-octane fuel suggests there is a lot of power to be gained simply by upping the boost and retuning the ECU. Add in the potential power gains from aftermarket hard-parts and this engine mated to the standard 6-speed manual transmission should kick some serious butt.