How SangYup Lee Is Leading Genesis’s Charge into the Luxury Market

“The world without Genesis in the luxury market is perfectly fine; we have enough choice,” says SangYup Lee, global design head for South Korean automaker Hyundai and its luxury division, Genesis. Since the world doesn’t need Genesis, it has to want Genesis. And making people want these new cars falls, in large part, on Lee’s shoulders. “We have to be audacious as a young brand,” he says, speaking on a video call from Los Angeles, where he has just unveiled a splashy new all-electric concept car. Audacious, indeed.

Breaking into any luxury market is difficult, but in the automotive realm, where the big brands have spent billions of dollars over a century or more, it’s nearly impossible. Yet that’s exactly what Lee and Genesis aim to do. “Luxury cars are expensive,” Lee says. “Luxury customers [have] money, but they’re not stupid. In my experience, especially [at] Bentley, customers only paid when there’s something of value.”

In addition to being audacious, where a young luxury brand can really stand out is by being progressive and original, he says. “Originality is so important. When you go to Chanel, you see underneath the sign it says ‘Paris’ or for Burberry, ‘London.’ For us, we want to be distinctly Korean, because we’re the only [Korean luxury-car maker],” Lee explains.

Before joining Genesis, Lee headed up design departments at Bentley, General Motors, and Audi’s advanced studio in California. He left Korea when he was 20 years-old to begin his globe-trotting design career, so he has plenty of points of reference when he says, “Seoul is really a Jekyll and Hyde city.” What he means is that it’s full of contrasts. For example, it has Michelin-starred restaurants and great street food; traditional wooden architecture next to skyscrapers; high-tech giants like LG and Samsung and low-tech tea ceremonies. “K-pop is quite popular, but at the same time, traditional music is still really big,” he says. “[My] source of creativity is this diversity; you have a plus and a minus and there’s always tension in between.”

To see how these abstract ideas translate into a car, just look at some recent Genesis models, like the GV70 SUV and the X Concept, the recently unveiled all-electric coupe. The cars are large and solid, but showy details are rare and understated. Only the brand’s two signature light strips really stand out. (Genesis wants to make those two parallel streaks of light into something like its version of the Nike swoosh.)

Inside, Genesis cars are all about “the beauty of white space,” says Lee. “These days, car interiors have become really busy because of all the technologies – connected, autonomous, everything – so do we really have to decorate a vent with chrome and all these fancy details? I’d rather take the other side, the more simplistic design.” That’s easier said than done. Simple can read as boring, but Lee says they avoid that pitfall by appealing to senses like touch and smell. Leather is leather. Metal is metal. From the driver’s seat, the cars certainly do appear to have a calm, relaxing vibe.

No matter how you slice the sales chart, Genesis remains a very small car brand in Canada. But it’s growing, and if the company is bold enough to put the new X Concept into production, it would make a spectacular halo product for the young brand. Of course, nobody needs a big all-electric grand-touring coupe like the X Concept, but we certainly want it. And that means SangYup Lee is doing his job.

All images courtesy of Genesis

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