From the May 2023 issue of Car and Driver.
Many of the world’s leading luxury marques built their names around two-door coupes or convertibles—”halo cars,” if you will—that loudly broadcast the brand’s ethos even if they didn’t sell in huge numbers. Genesis has been doing a good job of establishing itself as a bona fide luxury player without one, but that could change soon. The company has been toying with a range-topping two-door and finally appears ready to take the plunge. Over the past few years, the automaker has released what it calls a trilogy of concept cars that wear the Genesis X moniker: an elegantly proportioned coupe, then a fascinating shooting-brake design study called the Speedium Coupe, and lastly a beautifully rendered convertible.
As much as we’d like to see a production version of the Speedium, we’d bet on the coupe and convertible making it to showrooms for real. Genesis chief creative officer Luc Donckerwolke reportedly already confirmed the convertible’s existence to dealers, and a coupe companion would be logical. It could wear the name GT90 to align it with the flagship G90 sedan (Genesis has already trademarked this moniker in the U.S., along with GT70 and GT80). Oh, and Genesis will offer this model solely as an EV.
Given that Genesis was able to get a decent 365 horsepower and 282 miles of range out of the Electrified G80, a gas-engine sedan retrofitted with EV hardware, we assume the company’s next-gen EV platforms will offer considerably more of both. The possible GT90 would need somewhere north of 500 horsepower and 300 miles of range in order to be competitive. We expect it to be more of a plush four-seat grand tourer than a performance machine, since Genesis vehicles so far have shied away from chasing the Ms and AMGs of the world and instead focused on serene cabins, composed ride quality, and smooth powertrains.
In terms of the competition, Mercedes has the SL, BMW has the 8-series, and Lexus has the LC, but Genesis is setting its targets even higher. Genesis seemingly claims that the company aims to chase Bentley Continental GT customers with this new model. That may be the goal, but we doubt Genesis will try to charge anywhere near the Conti’s nearly $240,000 base price. Still, it could be the first Genesis model with a starting cost above $100,000. And if that doesn’t signify its arrival as a luxury brand, we don’t know what does.
Senior Editor
Despite being raised on a steady diet of base-model Hondas and Toyotas—or perhaps because of it—Joey Capparella nonetheless cultivated an obsession for the automotive industry throughout his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee. He found a way to write about cars for the school newspaper during his college years at Rice University, which eventually led him to move to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for his first professional auto-writing gig at Automobile Magazine. He has been part of the Car and Driver team since 2016 and now lives in New York City.