Ha! Quite a hornet's nest I've poked with a stick here...
Well, don't let egos be bruised. Be clear, I'm just whining fruitlessly here, and nothing more. Buying two cars both with equally uncomfortable seats... yes. The powers of self-deception are strong in this one. And you know the old wise man's saying: "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." That is advice you can take to the bank, and I certainly wish I would have.
No, sitting in these seats is not quite as bad as being sealed inside a medieval iron maiden. But anyone who sits in any XJ Vanden Plas or XJR or Lexus LS made in the last 20 years and says these seats are better, or even comparable, or even within the same zip code... well... pull the other one, it's got bells on it! You must be having me on. These seats are laughably worse, tougher, flatter, and with weirder contours in the lumbar area than any car I've been in, and it isn't close. It's disastrously bad.
If you want to know the powers of my self-deception, try this one. I had bought two 2007 Azeras in 2008 as reliable, good, comfortable cars. My dad bought one and I was so surprised by how smooth and quiet the engine was and how even the acceleration was despite the front-
wheel drive (the red-headed step child of the car industry). One for me, one for my wife. After a few thousand miles the transverse V6 was so noisy and miserable I sold the cars at nearly a $10,000 loss each after about a year. Yet I dipped my toe into the Genesis world with a 2010 3.8L Premium with essentially the same Lambda V6 motor a few years later... and found that motor so hideously noisy, horribly clattery, and about as refined as a farm tractor, that I sold that one at a big loss too. It's really the Tau I was after. It's too bad this car has the Hyundai 8-speed transmission, I really wish I had a car with the 6-speed ZF transmission. Those are excellent slushboxes and show up on Jag, Mercedes and others. The Hyundai 8-speed is also unbelievably crude in the 2012 Genesis, losing power for more than a full second and constantly hunting for gears, you never get to feel any torque... but the motor is smooth. I have been seriously bonkers about the Tau V8 since 2008 and wanted one, and I buy a lot of cars - and I sprung for it - and I hate it. The engine is great, the transmission is mediocre, the motor and transmission mounts and suspension are a dismal failure, the steering allows a fantastic amount of lean even when there's no body roll, and the bump-steer is epidemic. This isn't a seriously-engineered vehicle, this is a rush-engineered product.
Even forgiving it the excessive lean, confused noisy suspension, different front and rear spring rates, and humiliatingly bad bump steer, it could be an OK car (except for the fact that the steering column motor squeals terribly when it moves in or out of position for convenient-entry, the seat motors whine like they're going to die, and there are more interior panel rattles and squeaks and groans on a 2012 Genesis than there are on my '96 Jag Vanden Plas or '99 Mercedes S420) - other than all that, it could be an adequate car, at least nearly as good as a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord. Almost. Not quite.
But then you have to SIT in it. And good god. The shorter your trip, the better. The mid-'90s BMWs were a bit worse but other than that, the dozen-plus cars I've owned and driven have ranged between better and dramatically better.
You can forgive a car a lot of defects when it gives you a comfortable, easy place to sit, but the Genesis is too firm, too flat, and shaped like a spine I wouldn't think you'd find on a human being. Everything else might tend towards a respectable attempt at a competent product (certainly no BMW, no Jag, no Mercedes, not by a light year!!!) but with these seats, it makes you hate driving it. Try sitting in a Mercedes W140 or W210 and see what you're missing. Try sitting in any Jaguar X300 or X308. Drive 'em for two blocks. You can tolerate the Genesis. Not as good as a Ford Taurus or Toyota Camry or Honda Accord, but it's not quite as bad as an iron maiden... it just disappoints that it has all the other features, all the power, all the trimmings, and the damned seat seems to be built for the spine of an orangutan.
Happy motoring.
