Throughout my professional and personal life, car rentals have consisted of primarily of mainstream models. Recently, I had the opportunity to play a big shot and rent a genuine luxury sport sedan, the Genesis G70. Being a Hyundai owner, their luxury division’s entrants have intrigued me for quite some time and I immediately selected it when it turned out to be one of my choices.
It all started when I asked my son what he wanted to do for his first college Spring Break. Surprisingly, he said he wanted to visit his grandmother in Florida. Not really the answer I was expecting, but you can’t beat the location. I had extra time off and, since it was only him and me, took the opportunity to rent something fun.
One of the perks of the company I work for is a generous discount on rental cars. It only covers certain classes of cars, one of which, thankfully, is minivans. If you want a Tahoe or Mustang Convertible, forget it. When I sat down to book the car, I scrolled through the covered classes at National and Premium Special: Audi A3 or BMW 2-Series Gran Coupe caught my eye. For only $12 more per day than Economy. Oh, yeah, now we are talking.
I like National because they give you an aisle number and tell you to go pick a car, and there are frequently several different models to choose from. Instead of a Mini Cooper BMW 2-Series GC or VW Golf Audi A3, my choices were a Genesis G70, GV70 or Mercedes CLA250. The Mercedes, along with the Audi and BMW, rounded out the I’m desperate for the badge but can’t really afford it trio, while the Geneses were one class up in A5/Q5, 3-Series/X3 and C/GLC-Class territory. Since a crossover is my daily driver, I chose the G70.
My intrigue with the G70 in particular has grown stronger since we purchased a 2023 Hyundai Elantra two years ago. Its external dimensions are nearly identical, and it’s powered by the same turbocharged 2.5-liter, 300-horsepower four-cylinder engine under the hood of the Elantra N. However, the G70 isn’t an Elantra in fancy clothes – the Elantra’s clothes are plenty fancy, thank you. It sits on a rear-wheel drive platform not shared with any Hyundai, though it did also underpin the Kia Stinger. Designed by former Volkswagen/Audi designer Peter Schreyer, the G70 is attractive in a very different way. It’s apparent that he was inspired by the above-mentioned competition. Look closely and you see a bit of BMW here, a little Mercedes there, with some Audi thrown in for good measure. Overall, the design works, at least for me.
I must admit that there was an ulterior motive for selecting the Premium Special class besides the low price. Some of those mainstream models I’ve rented in previous trips to Ft. Lauderdale were pretty nice – the Ford Edge Platinum comes to mind, and the Chrysler Pacificas in the fleet are also usually far from basic. But I’ve never rented a luxury marque, and the thought of feeling like a big shot pulling up to my mother’s house or the houses of my friends in an Audi, BMW, or, apparently, Genesis, appealed to me.
We threw our bag into the smallish trunk of the Tasmin Blue sedan (we thought it was charcoal at first, but in the sunlight, you see specs of blue and, maybe, green?). The handsome two-tone interior is filled with soft-touch materials. Since the steering wheel controls and infotainment system are very similar to the Elantra, I was able to acclimate quickly. Even the shortcuts that line the bottom of the screen are the same, with plastic push buttons replaced with chrome press-down buttons.
The only item that took a minute to figure out was the shifter. Park is a button just ahead of the monostable shifter that controls R, N & D. Manual shifting of the 8-speed automatic, if desired, is controlled by steering-wheel paddles. Not hard to figure out, but needlessly complex. I noted there were over 40k miles on the odometer, but that’s been par-for-the-course for many rentals these days. It wasn’t until later that I realized that this G70 was two years old. I also noted that maintenance was about 3,000 miles overdue.
As we left the airport and merged onto 595, I was finally able to see what this puppy could do. Even though it’s likely that not all 300 horsepower were pumping as it was probably filled with regular unleaded (with no label on the filler-door, I filled it with regular at the end of my rental, and it’s likely everyone else did, too), acceleration was strong. Of course, my fleet is filled with small, normally aspirated four cylinders and one tiny four cylinder with a light-pressure turbo, so it’s not hard to impress me. I noted the ride was a little jittery, but it still felt stable at highway speeds.
It was too late to visit my mother who, fortunately, can’t accommodate two people sleeping in separate rooms at her home. So, we checked into our hotel then popped over to Pollo Tropical for dinner. I was sure I could clear the cement curb pulling into that end space. I was wrong. Even though it was a low curb, the 19-inch alloys on 35-series low-profile tires didn’t have a chance. While eating my mostly mediocre chicken bowl, I looked up to see if curb rash was considered wear and tear. Nope. My big-shot luxury car fun lasted all of 15 minutes.
The next day when we visited my mother, she was somewhat impressed, and at a little over five feet, fit nicely in the tiny back seat, which has about as much leg room as my Sonic and over 3-inches less than the Elantra. However, with the low seat and high beltline, she complained that she couldn’t see anything back there. While we were driving around, the Check Engine light came on. More fun. I called National and asked what they wanted me to do. The customer service rep asked if the car was running OK, which I affirmed, and she said that I could exchange it if I wanted to or keep it. I was fine to keep it but just wanted it on the record. The light went back off later that day.
That afternoon, I visited my childhood friend Mitch who, with his brother, niece and nephew, was watching his daughter take a horse-riding lesson in, oddly, the middle of a suburban neighborhood. Even though they watched me pull in, nobody said anything about the car.
Mitch is a handyman, and a good one. I showed him the wheel and asked if he could do anything. He looked at it, thought for a moment, then said he could possibly buff it down. I followed him back to his house and watched him work his magic. It wasn’t perfect, but it didn’t have that “fresh curb rash” look either. He then went around and quickly polished all four wheels and tires so it didn’t stand out. That’s when we discovered that I clearly wasn’t the first person this happened to. While the two tires on the passenger side were Goodyears, the driver’s side had a Michelin in the front and an Otani in the back. I guess that explains the jittery ride.
After that, I was able to enjoy the car a little bit more. Like with the Elantra, you can select your own drive mode. In the G70, there’s ECO, Comfort, Sport and Sport+, which disables traction control. Unlike the Elantra, you can actually tell the difference between modes. Sport jackrabbits away from stops even with a light throttle. Comfort allows for a smoother takeoff, which is the mode I left it in when my mother was in the car. I used ECO at the end of the trip when, after filling up the night before, our flight was delayed and we decided to visit my mother who lives in the opposite direction from the airport.
Another feature that highlights the difference between the 147hp Elantra and 300hp G70 is Auto Hold. For those who’ve never used it, it “holds” the brake automatically when sitting in heavy traffic or at a light (like Hill-Hold, but you don’t have to be on a hill). In the Elantra, it’s easy to smoothly pull away from a stop. Not so in the G70. Even in Comfort mode, there’s a noticeable jerk when starting off. I ended up keeping it off most of the time.
I met up with some other friends the next day, one of whom also owns a 2023 Elantra. They were a little more impressed with the car, but it was apparent that they would have been happy with whatever I drove up in – they were just glad to see my son and me.
I was still a little nervous when we pulled into the rental car return, but the two associates who checked us out didn’t find anything awry. I chose not to mention the three different brands of tires because that may have courted a question on why I was looking at the tires in the first place. I did mention the overdue maintenance and the Check Engine light. They said the technician likely did not reset the service indicator, but the car was probably due for another servicing anyway. They apologized for the Check Engine light and gave me a $65 credit for my trouble.
Did I feel guilty? Maybe a little. Did I feel like a Big Shot? No, I felt more like a fool.
Not that this means I’ll stay away from the Premium Special class on future trips. However, it will be to have a special driving experience, not to impress anyone.
I like that Genesis. I’m not sure why you felt guilty or a “fool”, you didn’t do anything wrong. They put you on the road with mismatched tires and a check engine light on…..
Most of my car rentals over the years have been made with Budget, and I’ve found that the best pricing I could find was usually available through Costco (typically much better than my employer’s corporate rate through Avis).
Budget Fastbreak members usually are directed straight to the aisle and given the opportunity to pick any car within a given class. My rule of thumb has always been to search for a car that has the lowest mileage possible as long as I felt that it was a car that I could tolerate for the duration of the rental. I’d quickly walk away from any rental car with over 40,000 miles unless there were no other options available.
As an example, a year or two ago we took a family vacation to Florida and I reserved a minivan at Tampa airport. As I kind of expected, every minivan on the Budget lot was either a Chrysler Pacifica or Voyager, but the mileage varied between 1,000 miles to well over 30,000 miles. Since the Pacifica/Voyager with 1,000 miles already reeked of cigarette smoke, I wound up choosing one that had about 3,000 miles. Due in-part to a family emergency, we wound up putting over 500 miles on our rental – much more than expected. Although I’d never consider buying a Pacifica/Voyager, our rental served its purpose without any problems.
I think Genesis’s biggest hill is perception of its H/K ownership. A friend and his wife recently went shopping for a luxury CUV. Included on their semi-finalist list was the Genesis GV-80, BMW X5, Infiniti QX60, and Lexus RX-350H. They loved the style and blatant luxury of the Genesis, but they felt the driving experience wasn’t the match of the others. They also really like the BMW, but this is a long-term (not lease) experience (they keep their cars 7-10 years) and they know BMWs get very needy after 60k miles or so. The Infinity was fine, but they fell in love with the “chiseled from rock” feeling of the Lexus. They commented that the non-hybrid version was not all that great, but the hybrid drivetrain adds a very solid feeling to the vehicle. They’re thrilled with it so far (as you would expect after 3 weeks).
On a minor note, they sold their relatively low mileage (in both cases under 50k miles) 2015 Honda CR-V and 2020 Acura RDX to CarMax for slightly more than they paid for them in 2015 and 2022 respectively. The used car market is nuts.
Last year I took an exploratory trip to the Charlotte area and upgraded my rental to a MB GLC. It was a great ride for 4 days; I really like the mild hybrid system. I’m not sure I’d splurge $55-60k to buy one.
“I think Genesis’s biggest hill is perception of its H/K ownership”
I’m going to wager that fewer people know that Genesis is under H/K than we think. At least until they’ve had to pull up to a Hyundai dealership in order to test drive one. I think they biffed it hard by not offering standalone dealerships for these cars from Day One. Lexus knew what they were doing. Genesis is starting to do so but are a decade late, perception of the brand is already fully formed, and the one in my area is still combined with the Hyundai store. Kind of a shame, they are pretty cars with well-formed styling language inside and out. But they can’t expect someone to walk into a low-rent Hyundai dealership to purchase one of these.
I knew about the Kia Stinger, but had no idea there was a RWD Hyundai, I mean Genesis. Nice looking car, but I’m sure glad I dont own anything with lower than 65 profile tires.
Ha! I went thru a largely similar sequence of events with the RF wheel on a rental Lincoln Town Car in Chicago over 30yrs ago.
When I was going through my 12 month long Lemon Law with Chevrolet, a rental vehicle was in order wherever the dealer kept the truck overnight or multiple days. Ed Morse kept it a week!
I always was directed to Enterprise and got into the habit of checking the oil during the pre drive inspection. One of the cars they tried to give me was a year old 97 Monte Carlo. It was beat and when I checked the oil, none showed!
My worst experience however was back in 2018 when I flew from Florida to Ohio. We were going to travel down to see a few homes in Tennessee and I have family in Columbus. Anyway, I had requested a truck and Budget has given me a new 18 Ram. It was 1:30am when we arrived and the attendant said there was no need to inspect the truck as it had just come from their service. For safety, I took full insurance!
The next morning, my daughter asked me how many miles it had, which was around 4000. She then asked if I’d seen the crack in the windshield! No I hadn’t. Then when starting it cold, the Hemi had a loud tick that took 4-5 minutes to quiet. I checked the oil, it was low and looked like tar. Upon further examination, I found the tear tires to be worn to the wear marks! Someone had sure had fun with that Hemi. I called Budget who seemed to not care. So, I took it in for an oil change and told them that due to my multi state driving, I wanted something safer. Part of the trip took us to Fort Wayne where they were very upset that the vehicle was in such poor condition, that I was lied to about it having just come from the service department, and that it was not “red tagged as unsafe”. I was offered anything I wanted and we chose a Ford Explorer.
Thankfully, I was reimbursed for the oil change and given 50%of the total!
Seeing that picture reminded me of the house Cindy and Beth grew up in on Sunset Strip!
DCA owned Sunrise in the ’70s and ’80s, and that model house with the side-facing front door and my mother’s house – similar but a little bigger with the double front door – are definitely the most common.
I wanted to buy that home when they moved to Plantation but Cindy said she didn’t want to live where she had grown up!
“Look closely and you see a bit of BMW here, a little Mercedes there, with some Audi thrown in for good measure.” Maybe but to me this looks like a Jaguar XF and a Mazda got together. That is not a criticism of the Genesis effort.
In the UK, we get some Genesis but the brand seems to be struggling to get out from under the “posh Hyundai” label and my hunch is that it will fade into an Infiniti type obscurity. Kia, on the other hand with the sharply styled EV range looks truly like doing the business, and deservedly so.
“I think Genesis’s biggest hill is perception of its H/K ownership”
I’m going to wager that fewer people know that Genesis is under H/K than we think. At least until they’ve had to pull up to a Hyundai dealership in order to test drive one. I think they biffed it hard by not offering standalone dealerships for these cars from Day One. Lexus knew what they were doing. Genesis is starting to do so but are a decade late, perception of the brand is already fully formed, and the one in my area is still combined with the Hyundai store. Kind of a shame, they are pretty cars with well-formed styling language inside and out. But they can’t expect someone to walk into a low-rent Hyundai dealership to purchase one of these.
The site trashed my comment. I resubmitted with a slight change. It trashed it again. I logged in. It trashed it again.
FWIW, this happens frequently enough that I don’t comment as much as I used to.
We cannot divine why some comments go to the trash but we check the trash can regularly and always fish them out, hopefully within minutes.
I know it’s frustrating, but I can say from experience that resubmitting the same or a very similar comment a couple times in a row unfortunately increases the likelihood of all of them being trashed — I think the system regards that as being more likely to be spam. It can also make it more confusing for us in trying to restore and approve the comment because it’s not clear which is the “right” version.
resubmitting the same or a very similar comment a couple times in a row unfortunately increases the likelihood of all of them being trashed
I observe this quite often and strongly encourage commenters to submit only once and be patient.
This happened to me a few days ago. Sure enough, the system had dumped it in the trash. It was rescued within a few hours.
Sadly, our commenters in the Australasia region tend to take it on the chin in this regard — not because of any prejudice on our part, but simply because the time difference means that there’s less likelihood of one of us in the Americas being awake to check.
That’s what we get for living half a day ahead of the US! 🙂
Good to know, Paul and Aaron.
Patience has never been a strong suit of mine.
Rental cars can live a hard life. Interesting the comment about walking away from one with 40K on it, I got one with 60K on it. A VW Passat I had very high hopes for. Past tense of course. Aside from the tires, which were pretty much bald and one of which I had to replace after it was still leaking with 3 patches in it, there were no mileage related faults. Overall I thought the car was a steaming pile where the individual parts may have worked, but taken as a sum it was a real POS. I really didn’t like that car. It seemed like it was so close to being nice, but almost like they just plugged parts in and as long as they worked it was good enough. Worked perhaps, but not together as a car.
Wandering a bit, the worst rental cars I would want to buy used would be rental Jeeps in 4WD rental areas. I rented one once, 9 months old, 30K on it and I’m sure most of the miles were bouncing off rocks in or near desert National Parks. It was beat. A perspective buyer might figure high miles would mean highway miles, instead most of it would be on washboard or bouncing off rocks. Talk about rode hard and put away wet…
But on the Genesis track, while being far nicer, do they project out to have a much longer life? I say that actually having had distinct fondness for the Hyundai rentals I’ve had, but they’re not known for longevity. Engines in particular. Not that it makes you happy, but it’s one thing if the engine only goes 80K in an Elantra, but expectations are much higher for a Genesis. Or is it just get it past the first owner and warranty and pity the poor second owner?
It’s all very nice and everything, but what’s the POINT of it? What does it actually bring to the party?
I can understand that Koreans would like their own posh car, but it cannot match the vapid snob appeal of German Whips elsewhere.
It’s worse over here in that RWD only and the turbo four-banger are all we get in exchange for the cramped rear compartment, so stands no chance.
Even our Lexuses are horrid FWD four-bangers and FWD-only. They do have a lovely interior and the legendary build quality but that’s barely enough, it would seem.
Give the Germans their due – they know how to lead the sheep like a good sheepdog!
“but what’s the POINT of it? What does it actually bring to the party?”
It drives far more like a BMW 3 Series than the F30 ever did, and it has a genuinely nice comparatively-analogue interior. So if you want a more honest compact sports sedan and want to avoid that vapid German snob appeal, here you go.
Although none of that is popular anymore, so from a market perspective I suppose there isn’t much of a case for it.
It seems that this sedan was more of a four door coupe. That rear door is tight and oddly shaped, I would imagine that a regular sized person would find entry/egress challenging. Ditto for the trunk opening.I like the styling of the interior and the exterior. I was familiar with the Stinger and didn’t know that these were siblings. Longevity. it seems that most mid range cars last well over 100,000 miles and into the 200,000s with reasonable maintainance and parts replacements. Do Hyundai/Kia products still have that 100k mile drivetrain warranty?
Yeah, the XE drove and rode far better too, but had rubbish four banger engines and reliability.
The rest is history…
The Lexus IS was a better 3er and died the same death.
The recipe just doesn’t work.
Another expensive car with a turbo 4. I thought maybe by spending Genesis money, a guy might get H-K’s very nice V6 driving the rear wheels, but apparently not.
I have found the styling of the various Genesis models to be very pleasing for quite a few years now. But in reality, I have learned that my life is plenty fulfilling even in the absence of a car that will make a big impression on others.