Genesis G80 review

It’s a road test trope to nominate Audi as architect of the best car interiors. Well, Genesis is here to raze the traditional hierachy. The G80’s cabin is superbly screwed together, thoughtfully conceived, and delivers the perfect blend of digital and analogue. The doors shut with a very premium, beautifully damped thunk, admitting you to a cabin as well appointed and thoughtfully conceived as a particularly tasteful boutique hotel and spa. There is wood and leather but it’s core to the car not appliqué. The lids on the centre console storage areas – where you’d find the ashtray when everyone still smoked – have the finest action of any car we’ve ever driven.

Sure, you might want to spring for the Nappa seats (£2,350) or the Lexicon audio system (£790). And although the spec choice is impressively restrained by the standards of this class – Premium or Luxury, with four option packs  – it’s still possible to configure a G80 in a way that calls to mind the contents of a provincial grommet maker’s executive car park circa 1982. (Chestnut brown over smoky green, anyone? Actually it’s better than it sounds.) A £45k G80 can quickly become a £60k car, but that’s still less than a speedy trawl through its rivals’ Byzantine options list will get you to.

Other than that you really would have to visit the latest S-Class to find a cabin as pleasing as this. The central screen is navigated via a rotary touchpad or directly by touch in an easy and intuitive manner. Its graphics and illumination are spot-on, the haptics of the controller a text-book example of how to do it. Augmented reality uses real-life real-time footage from the front-facing camera to show the route ahead on the sat nav in stunningly rendered detail. The drive controller is another rotary job, also smooth in action. And the climate control combines touch with physical switchgear.

Go for that Nappa pack and you get a pair of massage seats, finished in quilted leather and so orthopedically advanced that they get the German back health association’s seal of approval. Look, you don’t have to be staring down the barrel of impending middle age to appreciate this stuff, you know.