Hyundai no longer the Dangerfield of cars

After years of fighting for respect, the Genesis Coupe may do the trick

After two decades of offering shoddy, disappointing, and short-lived cars in the U.S., Hyundai is finding it an uphill battle to convince consumers that its products really are good now.

Quality scores have soared and hands-on tests of Hyundai models introduced in the last five years have been worlds apart from earlier tests, but consumers remain skeptical — and it is hard to blame them.

What the company needs is a new product that embodies improved quality, but also one that appeals to a customer for whom product features are more important than brand image or historical reliability. What it needs is a product targeting a group so determined that it would make excuses about the unreliability of Italian sports cars or rationalize the inability of British sports cars to keep the rain off their heads.

Hyundai has recently demonstrated an impressive dedication to product quality, both in terms of durability of construction and product usability, and the company has seen its quality ratings climb correspondingly. But earlier in this decade, it was Hyundai’s strategy to engage in spec-sheet competition, listing all the check-off boxes it could for each product. This is the approach employed by bored 14-year-old Internet flame warriors arguing the automotive version of whether Batman could beat Superman in a fight.

While the specs provide ammunition to geeks who send scathing e-mails arguing with those who actually drive the cars and have some basis in fact for rating them, they prove to be largely irrelevant in the real world.

What good was having a Hyundai V6 engine if Honda’s four-cylinder was smoother, quieter and more powerful at the time? So when Hyundai announced the Genesis Coupe, with powerful engines, modest curb weight and rear drive, the specifications had to be viewed with a hopeful skepticism. Fortunately the company’s new dedication to quality has produced exactly the kind of sport coupe enthusiasts would hope for.