2024 Genesis GV80 long-term review

• Part 1: Making an impact
• Part 2: Land of confusion
• Part 3: What's wrong with this picture?

Update 1 – Making an impact

Model: Genesis GV80
Price as tested: $130,000
This month: 1243km @ 11.7L/100km

I suppose it had to happen at some point. Despite having held a driving licence for 37 years, I had somehow escaped – and is there any delicate way of phrasing this? – being rear-ended in a car. Well that run of luck came to an end on Wellington Road in Melbourne last month, mere days after collecting my new Genesis GV80 long termer.

It all seems so banal, of course. The snatch of locked brakes on the wet road and then the impact from behind. I pulled to the side of the road and there was an old Mercedes-Benz C-Class looking distinctly the worse for wear. Expecting a corresponding amount of damage to the Genesis, I was pleasantly surprised to see just a bit of cracking of the plastics and trims on the lower valance, and that seemed about it. Insurance has done its thing and it has an appointment with a local repairer, which isn’t an ideal start to its tenure in the Wheels garage, but otherwise I think it got off rather lightly, all things considered.

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Prior to being shunted rudely in the chuff, the GV80 had been making a very good impression. I might merely be projecting here, but you’re forgiven if you’re somewhat bamboozled by Genesis’s nomenclature. The GV80 is the range-topping SUV, a kind of BMW X5 rival. It’s now only available with one engine choice, a meaty 3.5-litre twin-turbo V6, and the sole option is a choice of six or seven seats. Otherwise it’s as if it’s had the entire options list shoehorned into it.

It retails for $130,000, which looks decent value against the BMW X5 40i M Sport, which carries a $138,900 sticker price, doesn’t come with anything like the kit list of the Genesis and is also some way down on outright grunt. To whit, the BMW’s 3.0-litre straight-six develops 250kW and 450Nm, where the Korean is good for 279kW and 530Nm. What’s more, the Genesis has been recently updated. The most obvious difference is the old dash binnacle has been replaced by a stunning widescreen 27-inch OLED that includes both the dash clocks and the infotainment system. That’s not all though.

Genesis has also added new colours, tweaked the styling, added a bunch of safety and convenience kit, and the car now features all of the gear that was in the previously optional Luxury pack. You sit on beautiful quilted Nappa leather seats with suede trim elsewhere. There really is a feel of ‘baby Bentayga’ about the cabin execution, with high-quality touch points, an 18-speaker Bang and Olufsen stereo and, in this car at least, a smoky green/earth brown two-tone cabin that works well with the olive ash wood dash and centre console finish.

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We’ll get into the nuts and bolts of how it drives in a later report, but first impressions are promising. The engine certainly delivers in terms of acceleration, scoring a 0-100km/h time of 5.6 seconds, but I’m more than mindful of its fuel thirst.

The spec sheet reckons on 11.7L/100km, well up on the 9.2L/100km of that X5. I’m generally quite gentle with the loud pedal in normal driving, and over 1243km this month, I’ve averaged 11.72L/100km – bullseye on the WLTP fuel figure.

The cosmetic damage on the back of the car is going to be fixed next month. Shouldn’t be an issue, but I’ll let you know how that goes.

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Update 2 – Land of confusion

• Model: Genesis GV80
• Price as tested: $130,000
• This month: 958km @ 12.0L/100km
• Overall: 2201km @ 11.8L/100km

Or how the Genesis GV80 still manages to knot the brows of the uninitiated.

“WHAT IS IT?” Despite having been on sale here in Australia since 2020, it’s fair to say that the Genesis GV80 still has the capacity to befuddle a good proportion of onlookers. Some have commented that Genesis is the luxury arm of Nissan, that it’s an Aston Martin, and one reckoned it was a Chinese brand. Clearly Genesis needs to work a little on its brand recognition.

We’re doing our bit. We featured the ‘old’ Genesis GV80 in the Wheels garage back in 2021, so when the opportunity came to do a bit of a compare and contrast with the previous model, I was all for it.

It didn’t quite do enough to merit a podium spot at that year’s COTY. Judge Byron Mathioudakis described it as dynamically confused, not rating its body control particularly highly. It also scored poorly on the efficiency criterion, as it lacked either an idle stop function or a hybrid version. It still lacks both, and the efficiency thing would be one of the key impediments to me putting my hand in my pocket for a GV80. The first month’s average of 11.7L/100km slipped a little to 12L/100km this month, largely due to a larger proportion of urban driving.

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While the 2024MY update introduced a whole heap of comfort, convenience and safety improvements, there’s been nothing done to the oily bits underneath to materially change the way the GV80 goes up a road. It’s not at the top of the class in terms of chassis dynamics, but I don’t take great issue with the compromises that Genesis’ chassis engineers have had to accommodate.

Talking of accommodation, I’ve discovered that even with the seats fully folded and the front passenger seat slid forward on its rails, the wheel still needs to come off my mountain bike in order to fit into the back of the Genesis.

That didn’t prove an issue in my old Subaru Outback, despite their respective maximum luggage capacities being 2144 litres versus a mere 1783 litres. I’ll put that down to the GV80’s loading bay being shorter but taller.

Meanwhile, on the subject of the accident repair to the Genesis, largely due to me being overseas for a fair bit this past month, the process has dragged a bit. I dropped the vehicle off for repair, only to be told that this would be an initial damage assessment. When the bill arrived, it totalled a surprisingly modest $1877 for the parts less labour, which was then passed on to the insurer of the chap who kindly saw fit to rearrange the back of the GV80. The downside? The bits are on backorder and will take 4-6 weeks to arrive.

Reassuringly, the GV80 is proving a popular part of the family. It’s always a bit awkward when you get a long termer that you adore but your partner abhors – hello Subaru BRZ – but I’ve had difficulty prising the Genesis key fob from my partner’s grasp. She’ll love it even more when the car’s rear trims are all back in one piece.

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Update 3 – What's wrong with this picture?

• Price as tested: $130,000
• This month: 801km @ 11.5L/100km
• Overall: 3002km @ 11.7L/100km

Enright is in a set of temporary wheels after suffering from screen burn.

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Even to the untrained eye, the Genesis GV80 in this image looks suspiciously like a Hyundai Tucson and there are reasons for that. Firstly, it is a Hyundai Tucson. Secondly, the Berwick Hyundai courtesy car decals will clue you in to the fact that not all is happy in the book of Genesis.

A few weeks ago, the car had what I can only describe as an electrical brainfart. It started projecting images of the instrument cluster’s dials over the Android Auto information in the centre screen. I figured that this was something that would clear down once I keyed the car off and ‘rebooted’ it, and so it proved. But it was clear that not all was 100 percent with the GV80’s software.

A week or so later, as I left the vehicle, a message flashed up on the screen, suggesting that the car was updating its navigation system. This was a bit of a head scratcher for me, as I hadn’t subscribed to Genesis Connected Services. By the time I’d registered the message, the installation had failed. It was to prove fatal for the infotainment system.

The next time I turned the car on, the first screen encountered – the User Agreement Screen – had both of its options greyed out. There was no way to enter a choice. Normally, this screen times out if no response is entered and the infotainment home screen appears. This time round, the whole system blinked out, rebooted itself, and continued in this endless loop of failure.

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That meant no navigation, no Android Auto, no podcasts, no music and no phone calls but, equally annoyingly, there was no way to switch off the speed limit warnings, the first thing I always did when getting into the GV80. So rather than listening to something entertaining when driving, the GV80 exits servos bonging furiously at me as it retains the forecourt’s 10km/h speed limit until its beady eye latches onto another speed limit sign which, as I discovered on the South Gippsland highway, can be quite a long time.

I dropped it into the dealership to see if they could fix it. Their first attempt drew a complete blank, so it seems to be quite the technical challenge to overcome. The techs then tried to reflash the software, only for the same problem to instantly recur.

I was then told it would require a whole new infotainment system and there was zero stock on hand. On the return drive home, the system stopped rebooting itself and instead set the head-up display speedometer to zero km/h instead. Troubleshooting was like trying to hit a moving target.

While this all sounds a bit of a screed of woe for a man who has been given a free $130,000 car, it’s something to consider if you’re buying a very new vehicle of any type. As it stands, the plastics for the GV80’s rear end damaged by a dozy man at the wheel of his C-Class are still on back order and this box-fresh ccIC27 navigation system is bricked.

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I want my ‘old’ Genesis GV80 back. I really liked that car. As it stands, I’m getting to know a Hyundai Tucson instead. Hardly up there in the realm of first-world problems, and I’ve been assured by Genesis that were I a paying customer that the vehicle would be returned and replaced. I was loaned a GV80 Coupe and, lo and behold, it did exactly the same thing within minutes, with a bad batch of head units blamed.

So, at present, I’m waiting for a head unit to be pulled out of another vehicle and fitted to ‘my’ original GV80. I’d be interested in hearing if any other Genesis owners have experienced similar issues.

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