Genesis GV80 2024 review

Four years is a long time in GV80-Land. The Korean luxury large SUV launched in early 2020, tasked with re-establishing benchmarks for luxury, tech and refinement for its maker Genesis. And brought a fresh design spin, outside and in, that would quickly migrate across the brand’s new models and bring reimagined aesthetics to face-lifted oldies.

Its lineup brought breadth and diversity, lobbing down under with a smorgasbord of powertrains, configurations and options aimed at stealing away market share from established stalwarts in Audi Q7, BMW X5, Lexus RX and Mercedes-Benz GLE.

You could configure your GV80 to the hilt outlay permitting, though in its most basic form you could slip into the Genesis family hauler for $90,600 list…which, at the time, we called optimistic for the unproven newcomer.

Fast forward four years to the newly launched 2025 GV80 and, boy, there’s been a shake-up. And headlining the model’s significant pivot in positioning and lineup is a new entry price of $130,000 before on-roads.

Where old GV80 took the scattergun to the market to lure new buyers, evidence suggests that the vastly more consolidated 2025 lineup makes an about-face and specifically targets the (short) track record of existing buyer trends.

Prior, there was a diverse choice of three engines, and selectively in rear or all-wheel drive. Now, Genesis Australia has decided to continue with the most popular of the trio, the 3.5-litre twin-turbo petrol V6 while ditching the least popular: the entry 2.5-litre turbo petrol four.

The critically best of the trio, the wonderful 3.0-litre straight six diesel, was snapped up by around 30 percent of Aussie GV80 buyers. Now that’s gone. Incredulously, it debuted and existed in GV80 for just four years before pressures of global emissions legislation put it to pasture.

It’s now petrol V6 AWD or nothing, once a $108,600 proposition, though Genesis Australia claim a whopping 95 percent of buyers ticked the Luxury Pack option on all prior GV80s sold, which could add as much as $10,000 to the bottom line. This pack is now standard on all GV80s for what is now a single, high-grade, no-name variant.

All of this considered, there’s certainly