...We really could use some good Coupe conversation as well - but that's even more difficult.
Yes, the main competitor being owned by a very wealthy corporation. If I had that kind of money this place would be soaring. This site started about the same time as that site and there was no Coupe yet. So this place naturally took a tremendous lead in the Sedan area. Unfortunately, by the time the Coupe was available, they already had a lot of activity. I hope we can get some Coupe action here some day...
Just to pick up on this, having watched both forums, and others, over a few years, what's happened is that other forum quickly became mainly about the 2.0T modders and their various enthusiast groups and events. This forum may have already been seen as a Sedan forum, and the Sedaners have little cohesion as an enthusiast group, by comparison.
That site has also had vendors paying dearly to post about all kinds of
mods, generating friends and customers and more events. Their vendor threads are almost unmoderated, selling stuff to members who tend to be young or very different than the person who buys a Sedan, different even from those who buy Coupes not intended for modding and slamming, and most of those don't post on forums like modders do. That site also became a haven for Coupe haters, oddly enough, and Hyundai haters and 3.8 haters as well. That site generates chat-room-like threads going on for hundreds and hundreds of posts with no real content, moderator abuses of power, and it went for years it seems with no supervision or corporate ethics to keep abuses in check. This forum remained small, yet polite, mature, Sedan-heavy, generally pro-Genesis and pro-Hyundai, with short, problem-oriented threads.
I think the ship has sailed on their form of Coupe discussion, because the car has already been discussed to death and dissected over and over and over, far more than the Sedan or Equus or Veloster will ever be discussed, here or elsewhere. Despite all that discussion, though, the car is still a mystery outside the relatively small subculture. Yet, the Coupe forums are essentially over, whether they realize it or not, for all but speculation about a future Coupe generation (which may revive it), paid vendor threads, and a few re-threads as newer people buy used Coupes and start modding and asking questions. Also, that site has generated thousands of defectors and bans, with several rival forums and Facebook groups that hoped to supplant it as THE place for 2.0T modders. However, it appears that the 2.0T young modder subculture is not what it once was, either, and seems well past peak. Young modders get older, Coupe modders get interested in other cars, but also, a sizable group of Coupe owners are like Sedan owners and do not want to be associated with all that, either.
So, it's hard to see how to attract Coupe discussion here from several other sites, and given the above, hard to see why any site owner would want to
IMO, I suspect Hyundai-Kia learned at least one thing from the US market, that it was a mistake to put a 4cyl turbo in the Coupe and encourage modding. What happened was that way too many young and very vocal people bought the cheaper base models, complained on forums, modded it up, etc, and as cool as that might have been for like one season, it just doesn't reflect well on the brand HK said they were going for with Genesis. A 50-yr old with money and class who likes the Genesis Sedan or Coupe in terms of style and substance and value isn't likely to be attracted to the same things as a 19-yr old who wants his slammed, loud, plasti-dipped, turbo bling ride to be "liked" by other 19-yr olds. Nothing wrong with either approach, but they are indeed two totally different owners and posters, both creating search engine traffic and brand perceptions about "Genesis". I also speculate that this modder/slammer subculture, and possibly those other sites themselves, all seem to have contributed to the demise of the turbo-4 in the Coupe, and speculation over a whole new Coupe generation at a higher price point...assuming the Coupe is not discontinued altogether for lack of sales.
This is probably another set of reasons why there are so many lurkers here, as it's hard to easily fit in here as a Coupe owner among so many Sedans, when Coupe threads rarely take off - some don't even get answered at all, or are dominated by Sedan owners who "think it might be this", etc. There's no subculture boosting the posts here, no group events or anything like that to belong to if someone wants that in a forum. So, those elements do not convert lurking into posting. Maybe that's why a lot of recent threads here and elsewhere have been about the future, and certainly about positive perceptions of the Sedan and Equus. Maybe this site could become even more oriented as a place to discuss the concept cars and future directions of the various Hyundai, Kia, Genesis, Equus, models.
