The gentle caress to one’s buttocks followed by the prodding in the back felt reminiscent of the darkrooms in the Vauxhall Tavern. Consent, I thought wasn’t given and to be honest, I welcomed the interference. This was the Genesis Ergo seat massager that comes on periodically.
It’s a welcome gesture. Made even easier because you can switch it on using the seat controls that fall to hand where all the other adjustment switches are. And welcomed it is. I don’t care what Lenny Henry says about a Crossroads Motel type bed. Clean sheets aside, it’s no substitute for your own bed. So with the ergo massager and heated seats on, it was the gentle caress I needed when I was on-route for a funeral at 8 a.m. on a wet Monday morning.
Here we have the Genesis GV70 2.5T + 8AT aWD SUV. All that stands for 2500cc turbo 8-speed auto all-wheel drive. That’s quite a mouthful so the initials are easier to understand. It’s Genesis mid-size SUV and one of my favourites in their range because of its price. The base price is £45,135. Here with options, the price is £57,995. That’s still quite the bargain when something of similar luxury can cost over £20 grand more from the more well-known brands.
Looking at the cheat sheet you do see there are around £7k in innovations and comfort packs added. There are some things you can do without like the towbar at £1399 and the £750 for the grey exterior colour. Included in the packs are the carpark buttons on the key. It’s a handy thing to have. Learn it and you’ll be remote driving the GV70 in and out of carpark spaces with no risk of smashing your doors into the car next to you. Sadly this isn’t always a vice-versa thing. They can always smash theirs into you.
It’s not easy bulking up a saloon car to meet the requirements of a good-looking SUV but Genesis has done quite a good job across their range. They don’t rely on aggressive looks like BMW or harsh angles from Lexus. Its owner company offerings have a harsh look to them. Genesis has gone for a soft and curvy look throughout their range.
I hate to use the word premium but there is a feel of it around the cabin. Everything has a solid feel to it. Or soft feel. Those expectations within a (kill me now, sorry) premium product have to have soft-touch surfaces. And you get them, everywhere.
A quality product wouldn’t be any good if you couldn’t keep it looking that way on your home driveway. With long service intervals, you’d be going a long time before Genesis picked it up for a service and cleaned it. With that in mind, I am glad to inform you that vacuuming the boot carpet after a visit to the local heritage centre was easy. My small Gtech vacuum did a good job. A tidy car is a happy car. Something my grandmother would say. This was more about the home than a car. She didn’t drive but I understand her point of view.
Navigating the streets in this is made rather easy thanks to all the sensors and cameras around the car. At launch, I was swept away by the mirrors appearing on the dashboard facia. In practice, they still amaze but in the wet or at night they become quite redundant. You can’t beat a good door mirror. And it is because of these cameras that they won’t automatically fold in over 8mph. I have to have them folded where I live. Surely it is my choice to drive with them in or out?
And I do dislike car makers deciding what is right for me. Forcing their narrative on me but this is for another discussion at another time. It isn’t just Genesis that does this. One thing all these sensors etc do is pick up everything. I can’t remember having a car panic when reversing down my drive. I have a wide spread of hollyhocks and crocosmias. They protrude the edge and the GV70 picked them up. Having done so, the car stops. Thankfully you can override it by going full throttle and it will creep down. This did worry me that I’d clear the plants and then ram at 0-62 in 6.1 seconds into my Fiat X1/9 under the carport.
The engines from Genesis have come in for some criticism. On paper, this petrol 2.5 turbo 299bhp monster propels the just shy of 2-ton vehicle at speed. Claimed 0-62 of 6.1 sec felt more leisurely than this. Probably more drive error because max BHP is achieved at 5800rpm. Unless you override the 8-speed auto box, it changes up far earlier than this.
And it’s not as noisy or intrusive as I was expecting. I did have a moment of bewilderment when in sports mode. I soon discovered this has the option of engine noise coming in over the speakers. Bit of a ghastly gimmick if you ask me. What’s wrong with making noises yourself? Thankfully you can switch this off!
In ‘sport’ mode, you can see the fuel gauge drop. Around the lanes of my home, I struggled to get it past 13mpg. Back to normal and 19-21 returned quite quickly. Genesis state figures from 18.65 to 35.89. Not unachievable. I did manage around 34 in eco mode at a set cruise of 60. Heavens forbid that I’ve just broken one of the rules of motoring journalism, and probably be shunned at the next launch I go to, but one must test and test I did.
It isn’t all rosy and the tinted glasses fell away when I lifted the boot. For a luxury car with a premium feel, I’m once again amazed to find such poorly painted boot shuts. Even the base coat under the bonnet has more of a shine to its finish than it did here.
And then there are the rear indicators. They sit too low down in the bumper to be visually clear. And there is no need for this. The rear clusters are long enough to house a good-sized flashing unit.
There is a lot to like about the GV70. A few things I don’t like but you can’t have it all. Thankfully with this, you can have most of it and still have your cake and eat it. There is enough power under the bonnet to pull your arse away full of cake, so eat away!