Hyundai’s luxury arm won’t have a boutique-style showroom in Australia’s second-biggest city until next year.
Genesis opened its first boutique in Sydney last year, and followed it up with a more conventional showroom in Parramatta. The brand initially planned to set up a second boutique in Melbourne during 2020, but has been forced to delay its opening.
“The original plan was to launch the Melbourne Genesis Studio in 2020, but due to design and construction delays (of which COVID was factor) the opening has been pushed to early 2021,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
Genesis currently only has the G70 and G80 sedans on sale in Australia, but its rival to the BMW X5, the GV80, is set to touch down later this year.
An update to the G70 is coming in the first half of next year, set to be followed by the BMW X3-rivalling GV70 SUV.
Genesis has sold just 127 cars to date in 2020, fewer than Citroen and Ferrari, and just three sales ahead of Bentley. It does, however, represent an improvement on the 84 it had sold to the same point in 2019.
Expect the arrival of the GV80 to drive a healthy spike in those sales numbers. Speaking on the CarExpert podcast, Genesis national marketing manager Stewart Parnaby last month said the large SUV is attracting plenty of interest.
“GV80, we have people walk into the head office and ask us questions about it,” he said
“People are really, really excited about this product – overseas it’s got waiting lists. We wanted to be launching it earlier in the year, people are contacting us on social media daily [asking] ‘when’s it coming, when can I drive one?'”
