It’s been a good couple of years for luxury automotive brands, especially Genesis, one of the newest guys on the block. After initially launching with a sedan-only lineup, the company’s GV80 SUV premiered in 2020 as one of the crown jewels of its lineup, and now the GV80 is the recipient of a subtle refresh to give its lifecycle a little sales oomph.
Before us journalists could even get into the cars, Genesis announced that it’s more than doubling the U.S. states it operates in, with the number of standalone dealerships rising from nine to 35. There are more opportunities than ever before to bring Genesis directly to the masses and the GV80 will light the way. The GV80 alone accounts for one-third of Genesis sales in the U.S. overall; in the first quarter of this year, Genesis sold a record 14,777 vehicles with 4,768 of those cars being GV80s. That’s the kind of success Genesis doesn’t want to mess with, and after driving the updated GV80 through the Texas countryside, luckily I can confirm it hasn’t.
Full disclosure: Genesis brought me out to Fort Worth, Texas, and put me up in a nice hotel to take the GV80 for a drive around the Texas countryside.
Not much has changed for the GV80 on the drivetrain front. Customers can still choose between a turbocharged 2.5-liter inline-4 engine good for 300 horsepower and 311 pound-feet of torque or the twin-turbo 3.5-liter V6 engine with 375 hp and 391 lb-ft of torque. Both come with all-wheel drive and an 8-speed transmission, and the GV80 has five standard drive modes.
Base pricing stays around the same as last year’s models, with the AWD package (thought all of the GV80s are all-wheel drive) will be the base model at $58,700 MSRP, at least until a $57,700 model hits dealerships later this summer. Up at the top of the package ladder, however, you get into baby Bentley territory indeed. The top of the 2025 model year is the 3.5-liter Prestige package at $79,300. Prestige buyers get everything from a power folding second and third rows, Nappa Leather seats and heated rear seats. The priciest package you can get a GV80 in the last model year is $69,200.
Styling is where most of the updates were made. A new and intricately engraved emblem graces the hood, the LED headlamp design has been updated for better performance and the net-like grille gets a second layer of diamond mesh, adding to the commitment to the two-line design Genesis is known for.
Genesis also heavily redesigned the lower front bumper on the GV80 to be more aggressive. While it doesn’t look bad, man, I hate the focus around “aggressive” styling. Genesis is great because the cars are classy, beautiful and full of unexpected details (the carved beveled lines on the window switches are particularly memorable in the 2025 model.) But aggressive? That’s literally every other automaker’s schtick. Troy Saito, Genesis’ Director of Sales Operations in the U.S., told a group of journalists that this is the general design direction for the company’s SUVs.
“We’ve been noticing the trends in the segments are a bit more aggressive and a bit more in your face. So we’re moving, gently, in that direction,” Saito said. I hope Genesis does stick with, at most, gentle aggression. The actual change is good and gives the front bumper more structure by turning it from a smile to a grimace, which is, I guess, aggressive.
I just love the art deco grace of these cars, and I’d hate to see that design go by the wayside to chase looking like every other automaker, but with the likes of the Mercedes-Benz GLE and the BMW X5 and the Lexus RX in its crosshairs, the GV80 is eyeing buyers looking for aggressive SUVs. The little luxury company that could is still chasing as many conquest customers as it can, so a little aggressive upgrade is to be forgiven.
The rear design now also accentuates the width and “road presence” of the vehicle. Genesis hid the exhaust behind the same sort of “aggressive” cladding from the front bumper, which I think looks great. And along with aggressive style comes the big wheels loved by automakers, with 19-inch wheels standard on the four-cylinder and up to 22-inchers offered on the high-er end trims.
Inside things are as luxurious as ever. Everything is wrapped in the supple leather you’d expect from a luxury SUV, with two new color combos coming out for the 2025 model. As a fan of all things extra, I’m partial to the green-black and cognac brown leather interior option paired with the new matte green exterior finish that Genesis calls Storr. The season for the green car is upon us once again my children, and I could not be happier about it. Hard surfaces can come in unfinished wood grain, brushed aluminum or a neat material made out of recycled wood and compressed newspaper.
The steering wheel — already a beefy boi — is even thicker and more richly leather-wrapped in the 2025 GV80. It feels like the wheel of one of the huge luxury trucks we pass on the freeways outside of Fort Worth, Texas. The GV80 doesn’t have that cool crystal ball shifter of the GV60, instead using a shift-by-wire integrated knob selector that didn’t make me feel like a magical SUV wizard while driving, but it was fine. The fingerprint sensor that will start the car, however, does feel vaguely magical, or at least futuristic. It didn’t work for my digits, of course, but then again I am not The Chosen One.
Just beyond the chonky wheel, of course, is a screen. Here we have a 27-inch OLED display that stretches seamlessly across two-thirds the length of the cockpit, combining together the infotainment and gauge cluster screens, rather than the smaller, more centrally located screen of the last generation and its standalone gauge display. The driver display is customizable with all the elements you’d expect, like odometer, speedometer, gas gauge as well as temperature and weather.
The right half of the screen is devoted to navigation and infotainment, and it’s much easier to use than the centrally located tablet-style screens that are finally going out of favor. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are of course accessible, though limited in what features the car can use when Bluetooth is engaged. My drive partner and I ended up connecting our phones to our GV80 using a cord. This is definitely the sentence they’re going to read at my trial for being a class traitor, but can you really be luxurious with cables hanging around like so many tape adapters plugged into portable CD players?
The screen is bright and beautifully designed, if not always easy to use. Once again, menus are the enemy of the modern driver. My drive partner and I, after much searching and flipping through the owner’s manual, ended up flagging down an engineer to figure out how to zero out the road trip odometer. At least your butt is planted in a very comfortable seat. In my stretches behind the wheel I got to experience the Ergo Motion Seating, and it really does make a difference in long hauls to have a seat that does the uncomfortable shifting around for you.
As for driving dynamics, not much has changed at all. It’s a steer-by-wire vehicle with high-performance gas shock absorbers that seemed particularly bouncy to me; there’s just a little too much air time when hitting medium bumps or washboard-like imperfections at speed. In other words, it floats like a luxury SUV, but doesn’t do much to angry up the blood. Road noise, never really a problem in the GV80 before, has been further reduced with acoustic dampening laminated glass, which really gives the fancy Bang & Olufsen–designed sound system space to work its magic. I’m not running out and dropping big money on speakers just yet, but I could be convinced.
I also got to test out Genesis’ Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems, which were impressively unremarkable. I say that because the lane-keeping assist and adaptive cruise control behaved perfectly and without note, which is about the best compliment you can give these tools.
The 2025 GV80 starts at $59,050 (including destination) for the four-cylinder, the same as before, and $75,150 for the V6, which is now offered with the Advanced trim as standard and is slightly more expensive than the old model. All told, Genesis will continue to sell a ton of GV80s, and these design updates will only help it gain more fans and grow more of a following.
