Hyundai Genesis -- the Korean luxo car

The interesting thing about Hyundai is that it seems to be the company that loves the word "incremental." It's how they operate, how they design cars. They bring out new models incrementally -- changes in their model lineup are not dramatic.

For a while now (to be charitable, we'll forget their early effort, the Excel), Hyundai has been making cars that essentially try to out-do the Japanese, or at least copy the Japanese.

By trying to outdo the Japanese cars, Hyundai is faithfully replicating them, in a way, and it's doing so in incremental fashion -- start off with small, inexpensive models, then start building slightly larger ones.

The problem is that there was no pizazz, no bling. (And there probably won't ever be any true Hyundai bling -- you think they'll come up with an Audi R8 replica?).

Yet Hyundai started getting noticed in the past few years -- look at the model change in the Sonata series (Hyundai's Accord/Camry). Starting with the 2006 Sonata, they went from stodgy to fairly svelte.

Then, incrementally, they brought out the Azera, a more upscale car, with a 3.8-liter V6 as the top engine. It was pretty snazzy. (I was going to say, "for a Hyundai," but actually it stood on its own as a pretty nice car.)

Now they've brought the increment game up to the entry-level luxury field, with the new Genesis. Finally, there's a Hyundai that stops people on the sidewalk, makes them look around.

The Genesis is Hyundai's answer to, in no particular order, the Infiniti G35 crowd, Toyota's Avalon, stripper versions of BMW, Audi, Mercedes-Benz. At least, that's the perception.

The car comes with two different power trains: a 3.8-liter V6 with 290 horsepower; and a 4.6-liter V8 pumping out 375 horses (or 368 if you use regular gas instead of premium.) Frankly, with only a very small difference in fuel mileage figures between the two, I'd take the V8. (I drove the V8 briefly last summer, before it was on showroom floors, and there's a big difference in the power. The question will be whether you want to spend $5,000 more to have the bigger engine.)