The Innovation Pack as fitted here adds no more functions to the touchscreen (yay) but does give you a head-up display, blindspot monitoring, all-round parking cameras and 3D-look instruments. It’s quite cool, but at £3250 then or £2670 now, I think I’d live without it.
It’s harder to call the Comfort Seats or the stereo upgrade without trying the alternatives. All G70 wheels are now 19in and fitted with racy Michelin Pilot Sport rubber, but 18s were standard when our car arrived. Every alternative is now dark-coloured, though, which I think is a shame.
The ride is agreeable and the handling benefits from the G70 being low-slung. It has slick steering, a pleasant balance and limited body roll. It’s reasonably firm on the 19in wheels, but I like the amount of control that it has.
I did pick up a puncture, which was in no way the G70’s fault, and even if there had been a smaller wheel size with more sidewall, I suspect I still would have done.
That was one of few expenses: the car used no oil or coolant and nothing went wrong. And while service intervals are short, at just 6500 miles, for the first five years there’s no cost to those either.
Included in the list price is a Care Plan that comprises a five-year warranty, five years of servicing (with Genesis picking up the car and returning it later) and a courtesy car. So it’s about as hassle-free as it gets: make a phone call or send an email, engage in a little to and fro to sort dates and wait for it to happen.
There are also free over-the-air software updates, although I doubt there will be too many of those.
In terms of fuel economy, what’s reasonable to expect? I saw a fairly routine 31mpg – not much under, not much over. In a leggy diesel, you might expect to squeeze considerably better MPG out of a tank if you’ve done, say, a lot of leisurely motorway running, but with this petrol car it didn’t seem to make much difference, even over a very long run to Scotland and back.
We’ve got used to talking about much better economy than this, but if we’ve turned buyers off diesels but they can’t drive electric, this is where we are.