2021 Genesis GV80 Luxury SUV Street and Off-Road Review

We finally got our hands on the all-new Genesis GV80. Can this luxury crossover live up to our lofty expectations? We're going to test it on road and off right now on Driving Sports TV. Two months ago we had a preview of this vehicle where I give you a complete tour of all the details. So go watch that video if you want to learn about how the seats look, how the trunk space works, you know all that stuff. Today we're going to focus on driving and not only am I going to drive this on country roads, I'm also going to take it to the mountains. But first, let's review the features of our test car. This GV80 is a top-end Prestige trim with Cardiff Green paint. Prices you see it here $72,375 including delivery. The engine is the 3.5 liter twin-turbo V6 producing up to 375 horsepower and 391 pound-feet of torque. It's mated to an 8-speed automatic transmission that powers all four wheels with a torque-sensing all-wheel drive system. In person, this design is just striking. It looks like something that should cost twice as much. Probably because the head designer was actually hired away from Bentley. The fact that they pulled this off at the price that they did is simply astounding. But does it drive as nice as it looks? Let's find out. First, let's see how the various drive modes respond to our standard slow-motion gravel slip test. The GV80 is based on a rear-wheel drive platform with an all-wheel drive system that sends power to the front when needed through a central clutch. In the comfort setting, you can see that the system throws a surprising amount of gravel from those front wheels once it's out of the gate. Next, with all-wheel drive locked engaged, we get a little more spin on the front wheels. And even though it looks rather similar, if we put the results side to side, you can see that with lock engaged, it's much faster out of the gate on a loose surface like this. You might think that switching to sport will make it even quicker still, but as we can see here with the all-wheel drive lock button still engaged, we get an identical result compared comfort on this surface. It's so quiet. Okay, let's go ahead and try the adaptive cruise control. I'm going to go ahead and hit the button here. Got a green steering wheel, and away we go. So, wow, why are we going all the way over here? It's... So what's really cool is this holographic display is showing me ghost cars contextually, not just what's in front of me, but also what's next to me and behind me. It really gives me a good sense of presence, but why does it keep steering me off the road? It's showing me a green steering wheel. It's showing me that it's tracking the lanes, yet it's constantly trying to throw me off to the right. And even when it is centering on the lane appropriately, it's a little more to the left than I really want to be. What's with this? Okay, it's centering again, but again, we're way to the left in the lane, and I'm not sure why. It's even showing me in the display that I'm way to the left. And now it's like trying to apex the whole vehicle into the opposing lane. I hate to say it, but this adaptive cruise control is not working very well. I'm gonna chalk it up to being a version 1.0 vehicle, because typically Hyundai Genesis does not have a problem with their adaptive cruise control. I'm not sure why this one is so awful. I'm about to turn off, and in doing so, I can see that my holographic display includes camera views of the two side things. And yeah, it's a party trick that they do in Hyundai vehicles as well. But here, it just looks much cooler because of this holographic display. Have I said how much I love this display? It is awesome. On the forest road here, we can really take advantage of this 375 horsepower twin turbocharged V6. Yeah, twin turbos. And much like the looks on the outside say, this is a sporty vehicle to drive. It has an 8-speed automatic transmission. It's got paddle shifters. It even has various drive modes. Okay, let's go ahead and switch into sport and see what that does. Oh, it lets me manually shift my gears. That's cool. So I can hold. This thing's quick. It actually, I can feel it. It's firmed up the suspension, so I get less roll in the corners. Using the onboard cameras, the GV80 constantly scans the road ahead. When it detects curves or potholes, it adjusts the suspension in anticipation of what's about to happen. Very responsive. And the steering feel, it's really light, but it's doing a good job of telegraphing what's going on to me. So that's pretty good. Yeah, overall, this is a fun rig to drive. Okay, let's try a zero to 60. We'll go ahead and stop. And three, two, one, and God, Jesus. Where's your mask? There we go. All right, all set. Okay, well, why don't you go ahead and get in? Okay. Say hi to Carly and everybody. Hey, guys. What are you doing? Don't answer that. Okay, I was about to do a zero to 60. Okay, I'm gonna put my seatbelt on for that. So I'm gonna put it into drive. I'm gonna put it into sport mode. And what do you think this is, fast or slow? Do you know anything about what I'm driving? Not really. 375 horsepower, 3.5 liter V6 with twin turbos. Oh, okay. I'm gonna say fast then. Okay, let's see. Three, two, one, boom. A little slow off the start. And 60. That was not as fast as I was kind of expecting. Hey, let's do it with a timer now, like I was supposed to. And three, two, one, and go. And, oh, there goes the boost. That was way better. And 60. Oh, dude, 5.69 seconds. That's pretty good. Okay. That's legit for a 5,000 pound, you know, midsize crossover. Yeah, the zero to 30 was 2.14. So it actually picked up really quick there. It's deceiving. You just don't feel the speed in it because it's not dramatic, you know? Well, I was just about to head into the woods. You want to come? Yeah. Right on. Let's do it. So this vehicle has 8.1 inches of ground clearance, which is quite a lot for a vehicle like this. Typically, these luxury vehicles try to get as low as possible, but even the crossovers. But this one actually is 8.1, which is decent. I mean, you're looking at, that's about like what the Volkswagen Atlas has. Now, of course, we have various drive modes here. We have sport, comfort, eco, snow, but you'll notice that there is no off-road mode. And at first I was like, well, clearly we cannot take this off-road. But then I remembered this is a Genesis slash Hyundai, which means it has the all-wheel drive lock, and it has the hill descent control button. So clearly we must take this off-road. And of course, one of the things that I always want to know about is when you're bombing down a forest road is, wow, this road has really deteriorated in the last couple of weeks. It's pretty bad. It's can you get the back out? Now, the interesting thing about this GV80, unlike Hyundai and Genesis of the past, this thing is a rear wheel drive platform. So we can scooch it around a lot. However, yeah, traction control system does cut in. So it does, you know, squashes are fun. Clearly most people are not going to buy this to do this kind of course. However, the one thing that we can learn from this is how well the power gets distributed around the system. Unlike most Hyundai's, which a lot of, you know, in the past, the Genesis vehicles have been based on, this one is rear wheel drive. So that actually should really help since it starts with power back there and then pushes power to the front as necessary. However, we have 8.1 inches of ground clearance, which is good. We do not have any differentials to lock. We do not have any underbody protection and we have wheels that are way too big for this course. So, and we have no off-road mode, so I'm just going to put it into comfort. I am going to go ahead. I'm not going to lock that center yet. Now this is confusing for a lot people. They think that it's a diff lock when in fact it is actually just a override. It basically tells the system that you want as much power to the other wheels as possible. So we're going to go ahead and not hit that unless I feel like we need it. But I believe that the logic will sort this out for us. Already creepy crawly, creepy crawly. Now it's kind of nice. I have this lovely camera system here, which is pretty good. I got the surround view kind of helps me like figure out what's going on. So the first little part here that's going to be a challenge for this vehicle is I'm going to basically remove traction from the your side front and my side back. But because this is a rear wheel drive platform, it shouldn't have any problem with it honestly, because most of that power should be in the back to begin with. So here we go. Okay, now we have wheels spinning and I'm just going to keep my foot in and see what if we can figure it out. Now this is an eight speed automatic transmission. It's not a dual clutch and there it goes. It was able to redistribute that power. So what it was doing is basically clamping down on the wheel that's was spinning to be able to push that power back into the system. And more of this is just basically the same thing that we just saw there just slightly different. So now let's try the next one. One of the biggest problems here is just the power. It's kind of a little surgy, but it's doing a good job with redistributing that power. So if, for example, you have ice, if those if that was ice in those corners, you can now see how the system would respond. And it does an excellent job of shuffling that power around. So obviously this is a luxury vehicle, you know, so we're not going to really try to do anything more extreme because let's just be honest of what it's supposed to be used for. We do have one more trick to try here, though, and that is hill descent control, which is nice that it actually has it. You know, sometimes the luxury cars, they're just like, yeah, you don't need that. I know just by the looks of this car, you wouldn't think you'd ever. Right. And with an interior this nice too, right? Yeah. It looks like it should be, you know, a Lexus or something. Right. Well, most people have actually been comparing this against Bentleys. Oh, OK. It is so quiet on the freeway. You miss that part because I just found you out here in the woods for some reason. I know that's what I do. Yeah. So we're doing hill descent control. This is a single speed one. I can try to decrease speed and I got nothing here. It's not doing anything. So this is one of those cases where they give you a feature and they give you the basic feature, whereas like on the Mercedes GLA that I had recently, which granted is a smaller class of car. But the point being is that it actually had I could change it in one mile per hour increments. I could pick one mile per hour, two miles per hour. It was great. Yeah. This one, yeah, it's basically three, four, five miles per hour. I'm not going to do it because I'll smash my front bumper off here. So for Driving Sports TV, thanks for watching. This has been my look at the new GV80 along with Carly and Agour. We'll see you again next week right here on Driving Sports TV. You want to go get some filet mignon? I feel like we should be eating filet mignon with this car. So fancy. So what do you think of this new GV80? Is it good enough to take on BMW, Mercedes and Lexus? Post a comment below. Also, please subscribe and like our videos. We make them for you and we hope you enjoy them. See you again next week right here.