Canadian Interior Options

[Johnboy2k10]

Hi All,

I am looking to buy a Genesis, but I am wondering why Saddle Leather doesn't appear to be an option for Canadian Genesis.

Are there any Canadians here that can confirm this IS an option, but it has just been omitted from the website?

Thanks!

 

[Mark_888]

The exterior and interior color combinations can change over time, so asking someone on this forum may not be the best idea. I would contact Hyundai Canada. You can also plead your case with them if they don't currently order that color from the factory.

 

[Johnboy2k10]

Thanks, I have considered asking them to order it the way I want it. I wasn't sure how willing they would be do to that, but I will definitley ask.

 

[Mark_888]

Thanks, I have considered asking them to order it the way I want it. I wasn't sure how willing they would be do to that, but I will definitley ask.

Probably not willing for the current model year, but it doesn't hurt to ask them so maybe in the future they might do it (especially if and when Genesis is offered in AWD version and sales volumes in CA will probably be higher). Their job is to estimate customer demand and order far in advance, so customer feedback should be welcomed.

 

[CanukV6]

The 2009 Model Canadian cars did offer the Saddle Leather interior, but only with Champagne Beige Metallic exterior. In Canada we have always only had one interior colour option for each exterior colour offered, no choices.
When I was looking at the Genesis I contacted Hyundai Canada to ask why they didn't offer more selection of exterior & interior colour combinations like Hyundai in the US does. I was told (rather huffily) that Hyundai Canada and Hyundai USA were totally different companies and each purchased their vehicles directly from the factory with option selections pertinent to their market areas.

 

[Mark_888]

I was told (rather huffily) that Hyundai Canada and Hyundai USA were totally different companies and each purchased their vehicles directly from the factory with option selections pertinent to their market areas.

What do you think Canadian sales of the Genesis are compared to US sales? Mabye 1/10? Just not enough units to stock every color.

 

[CanukV6]

What do you think Canadian sales of the Genesis are compared to US sales? Mabye 1/10? Just not enough units to stock every color.

To stock every colour? Maybe not. Tell me a dealer in the US that has every colour combination on their lot. But available to order, yes. I'm not suggesting custom colours here, just the same combinations available in the US. I really wanted a White or Sterling Blue car with a Cashmere interior, but here in Canada those colours are only available with a Black interior.

 

[Mark_888]

To stock every colour? Maybe not. Tell me a dealer in the US that has every colour combination on their lot. But available to order, yes. I'm not suggesting custom colours here, just the same combinations available in the US. I really wanted a White or Sterling Blue car with a Cashmere interior, but here in Canada those colours are only available with a Black interior.

First of all, you can't really order a car from the factory. Only the importer (Hyundai Canada) can order from the factory, and they do that way in advance. They apparently decided a long time ago to only have one interior color per each exterior color (at least for current model year). Maybe next year will be different.

When I said "cannot stock every color," I meant that the importer (Hyundai Canada) could not stock every color if the Genesis unit sales in Canada were fairly low. They order what they think will sell, and they don't want any leftovers that no one wants because of the interior color. I don't know if your interior color preference is somewhat unusual, or whether Hyundai Canada is not tuned into what customers really prefer.

I heard that in a few years, the Genesis may be available with AWD, in which case it should sell well in Canada, and maybe they will have more color options.

 

[oldtimer]

One more incident where Canada sucks hind tit. There's a pervasive attitude that depicts Canada as having to accept what the manufacturers dictate. Notice how we have to purchase cars with "all dressed" packages whereby the U.S. can pick options on an individual basis. Note Lexus pkgs here and their options in US. Same with colours for Genesis, take it or leave it. All you have to do is build your car on US website and compare with Canadian, different options. Contact their Customer Service and you get the most hilarious responses. Of course it's always about marketing priorities and that they know what Canadians want. Like we are so different from our neighbors....

 

[CanukV6]

They order what they think will sell, and they don't want any leftovers that no one wants because of the interior color. I don't know if your interior color preference is somewhat unusual, or whether Hyundai Canada is not tuned into what customers really prefer.

I hear what you are saying Mark, but surely Hyundai USA faces the same order issues. Granted the numbers are much higher, but by now there must be data available within Hyundai that shows what North American Genesis customers prefer in terms of colour combinations. All Hyundai Canada has to do is order cars with the same combinations in the same proportional quantities. This isn't rocket science. By giving their customers what they want they are far less likely to have "leftovers".

______________________________

Help support this site so it can continue supporting you!

 

[VivienM]

First of all, you can't really order a car from the factory. Only the importer (Hyundai Canada) can order from the factory, and they do that way in advance. They apparently decided a long time ago to only have one interior color per each exterior color (at least for current model year). Maybe next year will be different.

My understanding is that it IS possible to custom order Hyundais in Canada. Certainly when I was talking to a dealer about 2011 Sonatas, the sales guy was saying that a blue Limited with nav could be ordered if there weren't any in other dealers' inventory.

Of course, what you're ordering must be on the Canadian order guide, i.e. what's available on the web site.

I remain shocked that Hyundai USA doesn't work that way. Every other automaker, AFAIK, will let dealers custom order a car (where custom, of course, means 'the customer's selection of options from our order guide for that country').

 

[VivienM]

I hear what you are saying Mark, but surely Hyundai USA faces the same order issues. Granted the numbers are much higher, but by now there must be data available within Hyundai that shows what North American Genesis customers prefer in terms of colour combinations. All Hyundai Canada has to do is order cars with the same combinations in the same proportional quantities. This isn't rocket science. By giving their customers what they want they are far less likely to have "leftovers".

But the two countries are different!

FWIW, it's worth noting that Hyundai removed a few colour options from Canada in 2010. I assume those were the less successful ones.

Non-Hyundai example. In 2009, you could get an Audi A4 in a bright blue colour called Aruba Blue in both the U.S. and Canada. In 2010, that colour was removed from the Canadian order guide, replaced with a 'Garnet Red', while the U.S. kept its Aruba Blue and didn't gain Garnet Red.

Why is this? Simple, IMO. Audi Canada has priced the B8 A4 so high, and offered such lousy lease deals, that A4 buyers seem to be much older than one might expect for an entry-level-luxury German car. So, a bright blue colour that doesn't appeal to the 40+ year old crowd didn't sell (Audi of Canada apparently sent each dealer a blue car at launch. A good chunk of those cars remained unsold the following summer.) A mature-looking red (more mature than the fire-truck-like Brilliant Red offered in both countries in both 2009 and 2010) very well might.

I would guess that there are PLENTY of younger people in the U.S. who can afford an A4, given how much cheaper the things are, how much higher incomes in certain sectors are, and the different car culture (a lot of late-20 professionals who could afford an expensive German car seem to have embraced the car-less urban lifestyle in big Canadian cities. Not sure that trend is happening in the U.S. outside NYC.). So the colour options in the U.S. market reflect what a younger clientele might want...

(As somebody who likes the bright blue, of course, this makes me sad. But hey...)

Similarly, look at the engine options on a Genesis. Americans care less about fuel efficiency and have a higher cultural love for the V8 engine. So Hyundai offers two trims of V8s there. In Canada, I don't think anybody bought the non-tech V8 cars (there was a 2009 still sitting at a dealer in March 2010) when the tech V6 was $1000-1500 more. So in 2010, byebye non-tech V8.

 

[VivienM]

One more incident where Canada sucks hind tit. There's a pervasive attitude that depicts Canada as having to accept what the manufacturers dictate. Notice how we have to purchase cars with "all dressed" packages whereby the U.S. can pick options on an individual basis. Note Lexus pkgs here and their options in US. Same with colours for Genesis, take it or leave it. All you have to do is build your car on US website and compare with Canadian, different options. Contact their Customer Service and you get the most hilarious responses. Of course it's always about marketing priorities and that they know what Canadians want. Like we are so different from our neighbors....

There's a simple explanation for this.

Most people, for reasons I have yet to understand, buy most cars except German cars and maybe full-sized pickup trucks (where there is a bewildering array of options for things like axle ratios, towing packages, etc that could make a huge difference for your intended use) from inventory. And actually, even German cars - an Audi sales guy once told me that everybody claimed to want different colours, etc., but at the end of the day, they bought a black/silver/white car from his inventory because they wanted the car this week instead of three months later.

Now, the more options you have, the likelier it is that a customer will not be happy with what's available. If a car is missing one option, or is the 'wrong' colour, etc., then either the customer factory orders (leaving an extra car in inventory sitting there) or buys a competing car. If you bundle everything in an affordable package like the Genesis tech package, most people who only really want half the content in there will buy it; if you offer individual options, some people will say they want the adaptive headlights but not nav, etc.

Now, the Canadian market is MUCH smaller than the U.S. market, and is much more geographically dispersed. So your inventory has to be much less, and so you have to have fewer combinations. I don't think automakers like to be shipping cars from small town BC to eastern Ontario or worse, simply because the dealer in B.C. is the only place in the country with that combo.

Generally, I believe that most of the time, what's in inventory reflects the dealer management's view of what they can sell. Sometimes, especially on a new model launch, head office essentially dictates what configurations dealers will receive.
That leads to some choices essentially never getting ordered because the dealer thinks they're too risky. For example, when my dad got his red Genesis, the first two dealers he went to had only silver and black cars. He wanted to at least see the other colours. Thankfully, the third dealer had some red and blue ones in inventory. For the same reason, you will just about never see a non-silver/white/black Mercedes in Canada - those colours are what the dealers order for inventory, and even though MB Canada offers 10-12 colour choices on each model, at least 6-8 of those are almost never seen in dealer inventory.

Personally, I think the solution is to offer a few popular packages/colours/etc for inventory, and allow factory orders of other equipment/colour/etc available in other countries. Audi lets you do this (if you want, say, an A4 in Canada with adaptive cruise control and in a colour only sold in Europe, Audi Canada will sell you one), but for an obscene price - there's the price of the option itself, plus an extra $1000-2000 fee for ordering things outside the normal Audi Canada order guide. Audi US has another interesting practice: they have options in the normal order guide that are limited to retail sold orders, i.e. a car with that option will only be built if the dealer already has a buyer lined up.

But those are the Germans. The Germans will do anything (e.g. build you a bright pink Audi) for enough $$$$$$. The Asians won't. There's the order guide with minimal configurations, there's what's in inventory, and if we can't find a given configuration in inventory somewhere, then maybe we can order it from the factory.

 

[Mark_888]

My understanding is that it IS possible to custom order Hyundais in Canada. Certainly when I was talking to a dealer about 2011 Sonatas, the sales guy was saying that a blue Limited with nav could be ordered if there weren't any in other dealers' inventory.

Of course, what you're ordering must be on the Canadian order guide, i.e. what's available on the web site.

I remain shocked that Hyundai USA doesn't work that way. Every other automaker, AFAIK, will let dealers custom order a car (where custom, of course, means 'the customer's selection of options from our order guide for that country').

No, I think you are misunderstanding what your dealer told you.

Hyundai Motors America (HMA) is the official importer for the US. They order cars from the factory with options they think will sell, and they make up brochures in advance for the range of options and trim packages that they will offer in the US. HMA then sells the cars to dealers, who in turn sells them to consumers.

A US Hyundai dealer cannot order a car from the factory in Korea. If you want a particular car that a dealer does not have in stock, the dealer can call around to other dealers (they can see the inventory of other dealers on-line) to see if they can do a trade (that is what my dealer did for the Genesis I purchased).

A dealer can also place a request to HMA for the next available car with the options/colors you desire that is included in the next shipment from Korea. In almost all cases, such requests by the dealer are for cars that have already been ordered by HMA from the factory long before the dealer requests it because of the long lead times required. Obviously, if more than one dealer wants that particular car your dealer has requested, HMA has to allocate them in some manner, and the request may be delayed to a later shipment from Korea, or in some cases may not ever be fulfilled.

This is what happened early on when Tech Package models were in much higher demand than HMA anticipated, and it took a long time before HMA was able to increase its Tech orders with the factory in Korea to adjust for this. This affects many suppliers (such as Lexicon, etc) who need a long lead times to make the parts that go into the Genesis. Same situation for the V8 as the original estimates were 20% V8's, but now about 40% are V8's from what I heard (oil prices were a lot higher when HMA did its original planning). Believe it or not, they even have to plan ahead for leather color, dash color, and paint. Suppliers don't make these items one at a time, they make them in batches and need to know the quantity to make.

Hyundai Canada works in a similar fashion to HMA, but since they are selling a much smaller number of Genesis sedans (RWD does not sell well in Canada and Canada is a smaller market to begin with), they have chosen to restrict the color combinations that they order from the factory. If you are willing to wait long enough (maybe the next model year) you may be able to convince Hyundai Canada to order a color combination that they previously did not offer, but I doubt they can change the color options for the current model year. If Hyundai Canada orders from the factory a car with the color combination you want, then your dealer can request such a car when they buy it from Hyundai Canada.

So I think the confusion is what the term "order" actually means. I don't think it means what you think, since dealers can only get cars that were already ordered from the factory by the importer. As you may be aware, with most American cars, a consumer can go to a dealer and order the exact options they want and the car will be built at the factory specifically for you (even though it is sold to the dealer first and then sold to you). Typically this custom ordering from the factory does not happen with cars built in Asia that are sold in the US.

Some luxury cars built in Germany and sold in the US allow for custom ordering, but you will not get much of discount on such cars. BMW also has their German Delivery Program where you purchase the car in Germany, take a vacation in Europe with your new car, and they will assist you in shipping it back to the US. These cars will be built to US specs.

 

[ASHDUMP]

I like to spell the word "color" like this; c o l o r

 

[CanukV6]

I like to spell the word "color" like this; c o l o r

You can spell it that way if you like, but of course you'd be wrong!!!

Still we must honour our neighbours to the south, even if their favourite thing is to eat doughnuts with holes in the centre! Let's just hope they have a sense of humour.

 

[CanukV6]

Mark888: (RWD does not sell well in Canada and Canada is a smaller market to begin with),

Say what!

Without getting too far off topic, how do you come to that conclusion? I'll wager that proportionally there are just the same numbers of RWD cars sold in Canada as in the USA. In fact I suspect that it may actually be higher.

 

[VivienM]

No, I think you are misunderstanding what your dealer told you.

Or you're misunderstanding what I'm saying.

I'm talking about Canada.

Hyundai Motors America (HMA) is the official importer for the US. They order cars from the factory with options they think will sell, and they make up brochures in advance for the range of options and trim packages that they will offer in the US. HMA then sells the cars to dealers, who in turn sells them to consumers.

A US Hyundai dealer cannot order a car from the factory in Korea. If you want a particular car that a dealer does not have in stock, the dealer can call around to other dealers (they can see the inventory of other dealers on-line) to see if they can do a trade (that is what my dealer did for the Genesis I purchased).

A dealer can also place a request to HMA for the next available car with the options/colors you desire that is included in the next shipment from Korea. In almost all cases, such requests by the dealer are for cars that have already been ordered by HMA from the factory long before the dealer requests it because of the long lead times required. Obviously, if more than one dealer wants that particular car your dealer has requested, HMA has to allocate them in some manner, and the request may be delayed to a later shipment from Korea, or in some cases may not ever be fulfilled.

This is what happened early on when Tech Package models were in much higher demand than HMA anticipated, and it took a long time before HMA was able to increase its Tech orders with the factory in Korea to adjust for this. This affects many suppliers (such as Lexicon, etc) who need a long lead times to make the parts that go into the Genesis. Same situation for the V8 as the original estimates were 20% V8's, but now about 40% are V8's from what I heard (oil prices were a lot higher when HMA did its original planning). Believe it or not, they even have to plan ahead for leather color, dash color, and paint. Suppliers don't make these items one at a time, they make them in batches and need to know the quantity to make.

Hyundai Canada works in a similar fashion to HMA, but since they are selling a much smaller number of Genesis sedans (RWD does not sell well in Canada and Canada is a smaller market to begin with), they have chosen to restrict the color combinations that they order from the factory. If you are willing to wait long enough (maybe the next model year) you may be able to convince Hyundai Canada to order a color combination that they previously did not offer, but I doubt they can change the color options for the current model year. If Hyundai Canada orders from the factory a car with the color combination you want, then your dealer can request such a car when they buy it from Hyundai Canada.

So I think the confusion is what the term "order" actually means. I don't think it means what you think, since dealers can only get cars that were already ordered from the factory by the importer. As you may be aware, with most American cars, a consumer can go to a dealer and order the exact options they want and the car will be built at the factory specifically for you (even though it is sold to the dealer first and then sold to you). Typically this custom ordering from the factory does not happen with cars built in Asia that are sold in the US.

Some luxury cars built in Germany and sold in the US allow for custom ordering, but you will not get much of discount on such cars. BMW also has their German Delivery Program where you purchase the car in Germany, take a vacation in Europe with your new car, and they will assist you in shipping it back to the US. These cars will be built to US specs.

Okay, let's backtrack a second, and state the obvious, because I'm not sure we are disagreeing that much.

Namely, obviously, no one directly orders from the factory. If I want a new Cadillac CTS (built in Michigan) tomorrow, I go down to my dealer, look at the Canadian order guide, pick the options I want from the Canadian order guide, then my dealer will enter a retail sold order in the GM Canada (GMCL) system. GMCL will send something to GM Co. in the US, which eventually trickles down to the plant in Lansing, which builds a Canadian-spec car with the options I've chosen, and ships it to my dealer. GM Co. invoices GMCL, GMCL invoices the dealer, the dealer invoices me, and assuming I pay cash, I pay the dealer and drive off in my shiny new car.

Similarly, if I want a new Audi A4, I go down to my Audi dealer, look at the Canadian order guide, look at the 'special' order guide if I'm willing to pay the extra fees for options not 'regularly' available in Canada, and choose what options I want from both of those. My dealer sends my order to Audi Canada, Audi Canada sends it to Audi AG in Germany, the Audi plant in Ingolstadt builds a matching car, then it gets puts on a train, taken to the port, put on a ship. When the car gets to Halifax, they put it on another train, and it shows up at my dealer a few weeks later. Audi AG bills Audi Canada, Audi Canada bills my dealer, and my dealer bills me.

Hell, some automakers will even put the customer's name on the window sticker, i.e. "This car was built for Mr. John Doe." when you do a retail sold order.

And my understanding is that inventory orders are done roughly the same way. If the manager of John Doe Cadillac thinks a silver CTS with X, Y, and Z options will sell well in his city, he sends GMCL an order for such a car, and 6-8 weeks later the car shows up. If he was wrong in his market assessment, oops, he's stuck with a car he can't sell unless the Cadillac dealer in the next town has a customer who wants it.

Apparently, according to you and others in the forums, Hyundai USA does not work that way. In other words, there is NO way for an American Hyundai dealer to request that Hyundai USA request Hyundai Korea to build something that Hyundai USA had not decided to already order for inventory.

What my dealer here was saying was that Hyundai Canada, at least with US-built Sonatas, follows the standard model. i.e. if Hyundai Canada offers blue Sonata Limiteds with Navigation in the Canadian order guide, but no Canadian dealer has it in inventory and there was no incoming matching car heading to inventory, he can send Hyundai Canada an order, and they'll cause the plant in Alabama to build it and send it to that dealership. None of that 'sorry, we have to wait for Hyundai USA to decide to build one, and once one shows up in the computer system we'll grab it for you' nonsense that seems to be the practice at Hyundai USA.

The thing is, I can understand somewhat why Asian automakers follow that model in the US: they don't offer many combinations of options/colours/etc, and the US market is so huge that you might as well build a few of the less popular combinations and somebody somewhere will buy them. But in Canada, where the market is much smaller? It's the same thing with, say, Lexus - they offer about 4 packages per car, 8 interior colours, 2-3 interior colours - I do not think that most of their cars sell well enough in Canada for Lexus Canada to even attempt to keep 2/3rds of those combinations in inventory. So clearly there MUST be a way to cause the Lexus plant in Japan to build any car that the Lexus Canada web site will let you configure and send it to your dealer... (Conversely, on a very popular car like a Mazda 3 or Honda Civic, I'd guess 99.9% of available configurations exist on SOME lot somewhere in Canada, so whether they take retail sold orders or not is somewhat moot.)

Do you have ANY reason to believe that Hyundai Canada will not accept an order from one of their dealers for something in the Canadian order guide (i.e. one of the 'official' colour combos and features listed at hyundaicanada.com) and cause the factory in Korea or Alabama to build such a car and ship it to the selling dealer?

 

[ACpilot1]

You can spell it that way if you like, but of course you'd be wrong!!!

Still we must honour our neighbours to the south, even if their favourite thing is to eat doughnuts with holes in the centre! Let's just hope they have a sense of humour.

Quite correct CanukV6!

And don't forget the letter "Z" is pronounced "ZED" not "ZEE"!

Dan

 

[Mark_888]

...And my understanding is that inventory orders are done roughly the same way. If the manager of John Doe Cadillac thinks a silver CTS with X, Y, and Z options will sell well in his city, he sends GMCL an order for such a car, and 6-8 weeks later the car shows up. If he was wrong in his market assessment, oops, he's stuck with a car he can't sell unless the Cadillac dealer in the next town has a customer who wants it.

Apparently, according to you and others in the forums, Hyundai USA does not work that way. In other words, there is NO way for an American Hyundai dealer to request that Hyundai USA request Hyundai Korea to build something that Hyundai USA had not decided to already order for inventory.

What my dealer here was saying was that Hyundai Canada, at least with US-built Sonatas, follows the standard model. i.e. if Hyundai Canada offers blue Sonata Limiteds with Navigation in the Canadian order guide, but no Canadian dealer has it in inventory and there was no incoming matching car heading to inventory, he can send Hyundai Canada an order, and they'll cause the plant in Alabama to build it and send it to that dealership. None of that 'sorry, we have to wait for Hyundai USA to decide to build one, and once one shows up in the computer system we'll grab it for you' nonsense that seems to be the practice at Hyundai USA.

The thing is, I can understand somewhat why Asian automakers follow that model in the US: they don't offer many combinations of options/colours/etc, and the US market is so huge that you might as well build a few of the less popular combinations and somebody somewhere will buy them. But in Canada, where the market is much smaller? It's the same thing with, say, Lexus - they offer about 4 packages per car, 8 interior colours, 2-3 interior colours - I do not think that most of their cars sell well enough in Canada for Lexus Canada to even attempt to keep 2/3rds of those combinations in inventory. So clearly there MUST be a way to cause the Lexus plant in Japan to build any car that the Lexus Canada web site will let you configure and send it to your dealer... (Conversely, on a very popular car like a Mazda 3 or Honda Civic, I'd guess 99.9% of available configurations exist on SOME lot somewhere in Canada, so whether they take retail sold orders or not is somewhat moot.)

Do you have ANY reason to believe that Hyundai Canada will not accept an order from one of their dealers for something in the Canadian order guide (i.e. one of the 'official' colour combos and features listed at hyundaicanada.com) and cause the factory in Korea or Alabama to build such a car and ship it to the selling dealer?

The main reason why it is different for US manufacturers vs the Asian manufacturers is that there is a distributor/importer in-between the dealer and manufacturer (HMA or Hyundai Canada). Historically, the distributor/importer was set up to import all the cars, even though many Asian brand names are now made/assembled in the USA (as we all know). Some companies have regional distributors/importers that are not even owned by the parent company, such as Gulf States Toyota. Such a separate distributor/importer does not exist for US manufacturers, and therefore the dealers are ordering and buying the cars directly from the factory (so to speak).

Companies like Toyota and Honda may build some of the cars in the US and some in Japan for the same model, so that complicates things further and makes them want to stick to the importer/distibutor model instead of dealers buying from the factory. I know that the last Toyota I bought was made in Japan, even though if I had bought the exact same model on the east coast of the US it would have been made in Kentucky.

However, there is a way for an American Hyundai dealer to request that Hyundai USA (HMA) request Hyundai Korea to build something that HMA had not decided to already order for inventory. But the lead times are quite long for cars made in Korea, and the orders for the next shipment may have already been finalized. Most customers are not going to wait around that long for a car, and dealers/distributors have been burned in the past when doing that kind of custom ordering (plus one has to hire extra people and have computer systems that can handle those special transactions). Unless the customer is willing to put up a non-refundable deposit, dealers don't like to do that, and besides they don't get paid until delivery so they want you to purchase from their inventory. The Sonata is made in Alabama and the production quantities are much higher than the Genesis, so it would not surprise me that some custom custom requests may be possible for those reasons.

For many years Toyota worked the same way (no custom requests from dealers to the factory), but in recent years I have heard that they have allowed some custom requests from dealers to US factories. I don't think they allow this for cars built in Japan or outside North America.

Regarding you last comment about shipping a custom order to a dealer--for imported cars, they are not shipped directly from Hyundai Korea to the dealer. The cars are imported by HMA or Hyundai Canada (not a trivial matter), and then sold and shipped to the dealer by the distributor/importer.

I don't really know exactly why Hyundai Canada decided to have only one interior color per exterior color. Maybe they were being cautious for a brand new model. I still think that the number of Genesis sedans sold in Canada is very low compared to the US and that had something to do with it. Lexus has quite a few FWD and AWD cars that probably do sell well in Canada.

Ultimately, it is up the auto companies to decide how much trouble they want to go to in order to accommodate special customer requests. It may be that once the Genesis is more established, they will allow more special requests like you say they do with the Sonata, but even if they do, the lead times are still going to be a lot longer than a Hyundai built in Alabama.