Hyundai Genesis

The Asian automaker breaks into a new segment with a car tuned as a sports sedan in the U.S. and a luxury vehicle in Korea.

Only time will tell whether its benchmarking approach for the new Genesis pays dividends, but Hyundai officials are pretty confident that it will.

The Genesis will compete for customers with cars like the Lexus ES, the Chrysler 300, and the Cadillac CTS, but the engineering benchmarks were the Mercedes-Benz H-Class, the BMW 5-Series, the Infiniti M, and the Lexus GS, according to John Krafcik, a former engineer who now serves as Vice President, Product Development and Strategic Planning, Hyundai Motor America (HMA). “We tore them all apart. We tried to understand what made some of them great and where the weak points were, and we tried to improve upon those things.”