Car Trends Magazine

C’mon, really? Hyundai? No pedigree. No racing history. No factory museum filled with dusty glory machines. Yet here’s what Hyundai dares—dares!—to call the phosphorescent-Slurpee spill of paint on our Genesis coupe: Lime Rock Green.

Puh-leeze! Weren’t these jokers riding around on donkeys when Bob Sharp was running 240Zs at Lime Rock? There’s also Nordschleife Gray and Interlagos Yellow. On a Hyundai? They can’t be serious!

Uh, they’re serious. On sale since March, the Genesis coupe is a revelation, no pun intended. It’s a genuine yardage gain for the yin-yang team and a serious kink in the law dictating that rear-drive hoots must cost big bucks.

Is it HUN-dye, hi-WON-dye, or hi-YOON-day? (Around the factory, at least, it’s the latter). If we can’t concur on a pronunciation, let’s agree that Hyundai has come a long way. Lately, the workmanship has stood with that of the Japanese masters. The designs are fresh, and the dynamics have firmed up and flattened out.

Still, Korean culture works against a Hyundai sports car. Car guys are scarce in a homeland-come-lately to the auto age. Almost everyone drives thrift cubes—often white, always slow—and Korea only built its first racetrack, Everland Speedway about 35 miles south of Seoul, in 1993. In contrast, Japan has a high-performance heritage going back to the A6M5 Zero.

With Hyundai, it has always been about the price, and so it goes with the Genesis twins. The syrupy $33,000 sedan upon which the coupe is based dives for Lexus’s knees. The four-seat coupe also aims below the waist at competitors, with a 210-hp, 2.0-liter turbo four starting at $22,750 and a 306-hp V-6 at $25,750. The standard-equipment list is decent and includes a six-speed manual, power locks and windows, cruise control, stability control, a trip computer, and stereo auxiliary jacks.

The 2.0-liter turbo Premium and V-6 Grand Touring are the middle models, with leather, sunroof, and hot stereo, while the loaded Track version comes with all that, plus a stiffer suspension, Brembo brakes, limited-slip diff, and trunk spoiler. The V-6 Track runs $30,250, right where the foreign rivals start.
The base Nissan 370Z opens at $30,625, a poverty-trim BMW 128i, at $30,225. Only a strip-o Mazda RX-8 swings lower, at $27,105. The Genesis coupe is the first Asian to move into the neighborhood ruled by Mustangs, Camaros, and Challengers. As in the movie Gran Torino, we’re expecting fireworks.

This is a one-off BMW M5 with close to 600bhp. Built to commemorate the 25th anniversary of BMW’s iconic M5 super-saloon, it’s a stripped-out lightweight special that shows what M Division could have done if it hadn’t built the X5 M and X6 M.

Details, quickly please! I’m slobbering over this new BMW M5 already!

Let’s start with the engine. As if the 500bhp/384lb ft 5.0-litre V10 wasn’t incredible enough, BMW’s M Division has stroked it out to 5.5-litres. Add in a new carbonfibre manifold and the outputs have risen to over 580bhp and nearly 400lb ft.

And to cope with that extra power BMW has junked the sequential-manual gearbox and brought in a beefed-up version of the M3’s seven-speed dual-clutch M DCT ‘box.

Inside the gearbox is linked to a pair of paddles, while the driver and front-seat passenger sit in new carbonfibre-backed buckets. There’s also a new carbonfibre roof – that cleaves a claimed 50kg of the E60 M5’s 1855kg kerbweight – and the rear seats have been junked. There’s also been a tweak to the specification of the adaptive suspension.

Bar M Division’s triple-stripe colour scheme, and some stickers celebrating 25 years of the M5, this one-off looks little different to the standard car. The only visual clue is the offset number plate, which makes way for an new intake that feeds air to the extra oil cooler.

Expect this special E60 M5 to hit 62mph in close to four seconds, and easily top 200mph. We also hear it’ll lap the Nurburgring in under eight minutes, a comfortable 20 seconds or so quicker than the standard car.

But BMW isn’t going to produce this, so we’ll just have to wait for the new twin-turbo V8 M5.


(By Ben Pulman, First official pictures)

This is a one-off BMW M5 with close to 600bhp. Built to commemorate the 25th anniversary of BMW’s iconic M5 super-saloon, it’s a stripped-out lightweight special that shows what M Division could have done if it hadn’t built the X5 M and X6 M.

Details, quickly please! I’m slobbering over this new BMW M5 already!

Let’s start with the engine. As if the 500bhp/384lb ft 5.0-litre V10 wasn’t incredible enough, BMW’s M Division has stroked it out to 5.5-litres. Add in a new carbonfibre manifold and the outputs have risen to over 580bhp and nearly 400lb ft.

And to cope with that extra power BMW has junked the sequential-manual gearbox and brought in a beefed-up version of the M3’s seven-speed dual-clutch M DCT ‘box.

Inside the gearbox is linked to a pair of paddles, while the driver and front-seat passenger sit in new carbonfibre-backed buckets. There’s also a new carbonfibre roof – that cleaves a claimed 50kg of the E60 M5’s 1855kg kerbweight – and the rear seats have been junked. There’s also been a tweak to the specification of the adaptive suspension.

Bar M Division’s triple-stripe colour scheme, and some stickers celebrating 25 years of the M5, this one-off looks little different to the standard car. The only visual clue is the offset number plate, which makes way for an new intake that feeds air to the extra oil cooler.

Expect this special E60 M5 to hit 62mph in close to four seconds, and easily top 200mph. We also hear it’ll lap the Nurburgring in under eight minutes, a comfortable 20 seconds or so quicker than the standard car.

But BMW isn’t going to produce this, so we’ll just have to wait for the new twin-turbo V8 M5.


(By Ben Pulman, First official pictures)