Launching an upmarket sub-brand is a path of great risk, as more than one car manufacturer has found out to their cost.
For years the Japanese ‘big-three’, Toyota, Nissan and Honda, have traded blows in the lucrative premium market of America, with their Lexus, Infiniti and Acura sub brands. Lexus (which was going to be called Alexis until the management decided such a name would have too many connections to the Joan Collins character in TV show Dynasty – I kid you not…) is the longest established, Japan’s largest-selling maker of premium cars, with the US its most important market.
Lexus has also been long established in the UK, launching in 1990. Today while the brand makes few headlines it is regarded as reasonably successful – Lexus sold just over 16,000 cars to UK buyers in 2024 which was more than perceived rival Jaguar, though admittedly the latter was winding down current production ahead of its reinvention as an electric vehicle maker.
Honda has never shown the slightest interest in launching Acura to European buyers but not so long ago Nissan decided it wanted some of the action enjoyed by Lexus, and so the launch of Infiniti into Europe was announced at the 2008 Geneva Motor Show. Before long we had a network of bespoke Infiniti dealers across the UK.
Well, it proved an ill-starred venture. Infiniti found it simply could not crack the business market dominated by Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, and couldn’t even achieve the stable status enjoyed by Lexus – sales started slow and remained so, and just 12 years later the brand pulled out of Europe.
There are other sub-brands that bear comparison to Infiniti, notably DS, the ‘avant garde’ badge launched by Citroën, initially as a trim level in 2009 and as a standalone brand from 2014.
Yes, DS is still with us, but many observers see it as a ‘problem child’ of the giant Stellantis Group, especially in the UK where in 2024 the brand managed to shift a whole 1100 cars, half of its 2023 total. 2025 is looking a little better, just under 1,000 sales by the end of July, but hardly making a mark…
Which brings us to Genesis, the upmarket spin-off launched in 2017 by Hyundai. We first saw the Genesis badge in the UK in 2021, and it made quite a splash, launching a series of models with petrol and diesel engines while emphasising its future direction was very much electric, taking a direct sales route rather than setting up dealers and emphasising the luxury aspect of its cars rather than any perceived sportiness – Genesis ownership included such niceties as a concierge service which collected the car for servicing and brought it back afterwards.
When I drove the first of several Genesis models tested I was impressed. The cars were well built, as one would expect from a brand in the Hyundai family, and yes one did feel as if one was driving something luxurious. But some journalist colleagues could not help mentioning the Infiniti word and casting doubt on the future prospects of Genesis.
I was more confident – after all this was Hyundai, a brand that has basically done no wrong for many years now and is today the world’s third-biggest car maker. OK it was used to selling mainstream market cars, but surely it could make an upmarket brand work?
Before too long, however, it seemed that the naysayers might have a point. In March 2023 Genesis decided it did, after all, need a UK dealer network, and then in November that year it was announced that Genesis Motor UK would cease to exist as a separate brand, and while the cars would continue to be sold they would be effectively be part of the Hyundai range. There was talk of redundancies amongst those staff employed by Genesis and the future looked somewhat bleak.
Fast forward a bit more, however, and Genesis is making serious efforts to present a far more positive picture, with big talk of expansion and future plans. Seven major dealer groups have taken up Genesis franchises, five more are planned, with likely more to follow.
The brand is also settling out its future plans as a maker of purely electric vehicles, bucking the industry trend of slowing the shift to electric by saying that any pure electric or diesel Genesis cars sold in showrooms after the end of 2025 will be run-out stock – the future is all about hybrids and pure-electric cars.
That future plan involves firstly new versions of the GV60 and GV70 electric SUVs (a road test of the GV70 will be on Business Motoring soon). Genesis will also this year launch a more potent GV60 under its own sub-brand called Magma, focused on performance and intended to rival the likes of the BMW M-division.
The Genesis brand even plans to go international motor racing, competing in one of the world’s most famous events, the Le Mans 24 Hours where it will be up against such famed names as Porsche, Aston Martin and the winner over the last two years, Ferrari.
With Hyundai now looking after the back-end operations Genesis has effectively relaunched, with insiders privately admitting the first attempt was more challenging than expected. Okay progress is ‘steady’, with so far in 2025 only around 900 cars sold to UK buyers, but those in charge of Genesis are presenting an outwardly confident stance. Ashley Andrew, managing director of both Genesis and Hyundai in the UK, told Autocar Business that there is “unwavering belief that (Genesis) will be successful”.
I hope he’s right. As I mentioned the cars produced so far by Genesis have been generally impressive – and we’d like the brand to be around long enough for even the laziest motoring journalists to give up making references to 1970s progressive rock bands. Genesis deserves to be a success…
Andrew Charman is industry and road test correspondent at Motor Trade News
