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Genesis cars win accolades, offer value — so why are sales so bad?

My high-school buddy Brent Cormier was so smitten with the Genesis G80 when he saw it at an event I hosted at SXSW in 2016 he bought a used 2013 Hyundai Genesis a short time later and fell in love with the car. "It surpasses my every expectation," said Cormier, a self-described "renaissance man" who owns and runs a real estate agency with his wife Laura, is a food service executive chef and part owner of Austin-based Thin the Herd Guitars. "I was locked into Mercedes and Audi for 10 years," he added. "And felt trapped in an endless pit of maintenance costs." After owning the Genesis over the past two years — including using it as an Uber and Lyft driver to earn extra cash — Cormier learned what some frugal luxury sedan buyers and a handful of car reviewers have discovered: Genesis offers great bang for the buck compared to other premium brands and can compete with the best in terms of performance, features and comfort. Hyundai's luxury brand also earned a prominent third-party endorsement last week when for the first time Genesis topped J.D. Power's 2018 APEAL study, surpassing German luxury-performance icon Porsche. The APEAL study (which stands for Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout) "measures owners' emotional attachment and level of excitement across 77 attributes," ranging from performance to comfort, and asks nearly 68,000 owners of new 2018 models to score vehicles on a 1,000-point scale. In its second year ranked as a stand-alone brand, Genesis earned an APEAL score that bumped it up 15 points to 884 and helped push it past Porsche — and past BMW, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Volvo, Cadillac, Land Rover and Lexus, in order of ranking. Last month, Genesis also topped J.D. Power's Initial Quality Survey (IQS) for the first time this year. And both its models were awarded Top Safety Pick Plus ratings by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, among 11 Plus ratings in all for Korean vehicles. Despite high J.D. Power rankings and great reviews, Genesis U.S. sales were off 50 percent for the first six months of 2018 compared to 2017, and in June Genesis sold only 796 vehicles — the first time U.S. numbers dropped below 1,000 in a month. Part of Genesis's APEAL and IQS success can be attributed to its small product lineup: just two models, the G80 and G90 sedans, with a third, the 2019 G70, launching later this year. And while those numbers may help in J.D.

AB Volvo to build trucks using steel forged without fossil fuel

STOCKHOLM — Swedish truck maker AB Volvo and steel maker SSAB have signed an agreement to produce the world's first vehicles made of fossil-free steel, the companies said on Thursday. Volvo plans to start production this year of prototype vehicles and components from steel made by SSAB using hydrogen produced from renewable energy. Small-scale serial production will start in 2022. "This is an important step on the road to completely climate-neutral transport," Volvo CEO Martin Lundstedt said. The vehicles and machines will be emissions-free in operation, Volvo said, without specifying how they would run, while adding the company is reviewing all the materials used in their construction to eliminate anything based on fossil fuels. It will be sourcing steel from green steel venture HYBRIT — which is owned by SSAB, Swedish state-owned utility Vattenfall and Swedish miner LKAB. Last August, it began test operations in Lulea, Sweden, to replace coking coal, traditionally needed for ore-based steel making, with fossil-free electricity and hydrogen, which in turn is produced using only renewable power. [L8N2FX3LV] China's Geely Holding, which has a stake in AB Volvo, owns Volvo Cars, which it has said will be fully electric by 2030.

Stolen first production Volvo P1800 recovered

Late last month, we told you about a 1961 Volvo P1800 that had been stolen in Sweden. The thought of losing a classic coupe to an unscrupulous thief is troubling enough, but this wasn't just any P1800 - it was the very first production example minted, and the restored red-over-white two-door was owned by the vice president of the Swedish P1800 Club to boot. Chassis Number Two was pilfered from a Stockholm lockup on either August 21 or 22, and the theft triggered an international hunt of sorts.
Fortunately, that hunt has come to a (mostly) happy ending. According to Larmtjänst AB, a non-profit organization dedicated to fighting vehicle crime in Sweden, the car was spotted by someone who had read about the missing classic. The P1800 was recovered in Hägerstensvägen, a municipality of Stockholm, after being found abandoned on the road covered with a tarp. The owner is reportedly very relieved that his Volvo is mostly intact, marred only by a broken ignition and a dirty interior.