SUVs may be where the retail money is, but if you want to judge the success of a player in the luxury car set, the metric is still its flagship sedan. Mercedes-Benz and BMW set the benchmark with the S-Class and 7 Series, respectively, and threw down the gauntlet for skirmish upon skirmish as would-be luxe upstarts tried to take down the kings. The two big surprises about the 2024 Genesis G90, though, are just how quickly it became a genuine contender — and the route by which it achieved that.
Less than a decade since the G90 nameplate appeared, and the Genesis four-door is already in its second generation. It's a handsome sedan, big — as you'd expect — though some of Genesis' visual tricks minimize that from certain quarters. The large grille no longer seems quite so dramatic, given the snouts of many auto rivals these days, while the G90's double-whisker headlamps are distinctive (and echoed at the rear with the LED taillamps).
I like how the design stretches back behind the front wheel arches, too, not to mention how well Genesis' 21-inch wheels (an upgrade from the base 20-inch set) fill them. The rear is where things get most interesting, though — a gathering of intersecting lines and angles that make no attempt to ape any other luxury four-door. There's something tailored to it, reminiscent of a well-structured Saville Row suit; the kink of the rearmost quarter-glass, its chrome trim, and the general surfacing at that point are particularly striking.
Factor in t.