US Design of the Year goes to an effortlessly beautiful supercar… the Genesis Magma GT

“Design is not about glamour, we need to be responsible as designers… not driven by ego, but brand focused. Design history always differentiates the foolish from the authentics.”

So says Luc Donckerwolcke, current chief creative officer and president of the Hyundai Motor Group - and latterly the Genesis brand. A brand that’s having a defining moment with a raft of concepts that seem suspiciously like near-production prototypes. And none more so than the Magma GT.

It’s not a groundbreaking format; two-seats, a mid-engined crouch slathered over lots of rear-wheel drive energy, canopy windowline, the route one of sports cars. But there’s also a surprising lack of frippery, which is why it looks instantly accessible; you don’t need this design to percolate, because it’s already pretty. Ultra-fashionable probably not, but timeless elegance is a longer game.

Photography: Mark Riccioni

“Proportions, proportions and proportions," says Donckerwolcke, "if you do not fight for them you’ll have to apply a lot of make-up. We work hard on the orchestration of the muscles around the wheels, the position of the cabin between the axles and the amount of tapering of the overhangs. Once that’s done we eliminate all the redundant design elements to try and achieve a puristic and iconic beauty.”

Which makes it sound relatively easy, but for the man who oversaw the design of the Audi A2, Lamborghini Diablo GT, Murcielago, Gallardo, various VWs and the last tranche of modern Bentleys - among many others - it seems to come from a deeper understanding of what each brand means, rather than just reaching for headlines. But the temptation for Instagram-friendly big wings and aggressive detail must always linger?

“Look at all the iconic cars that forged our understanding of performance cars; they are puristic. From the (Ferrari) 250 GTO to the (Lancia) Stratos, the (Lamborghini) Miura or the Periscope Countach, they live from the volumes. Some details like NACA intakes, slats or eyebrows are carefully positioned, nothing more. The truth is that styling overkill does not age well; it just saturates and fights the design. I prefer to spend a lot of time experimenting in order to reduce the impact of functional elements (on the GT) like the canards integrated in the two-line lighting signature or the sliding rear spoilers.”

He’s right; the GT simply fits a Genesis aesthetic without hitting you repeatedly over the head with it, or needing an hour-long PowerPoint for you to ‘understand’. It’s about what you leave out, rather than what you add in; the Tao of the Edit. The nose is clean and low - the grille textured but swooping down in a wave that incorporates the front splitter. Genesis’ two-lane light signature sweeps out around the corners of the front wings - making the GT look wider than it is - expanding out into little aero canards, with the repeater elements behind the front wheelarch linking the thought.

The side is unfussy and straight, before bowing up into a rear arch that has more rear-wheel drive muscle than it knows what to do with. And there’s that canopy sitting on top - with a giant NACA duct in the roof that you can only see when up close. It feeds a twin turbo V8 that is startlingly real. Someone seems to have forgotten to bolt on the exhaust system, but it makes an impression.

The interior is more of the same kind of considered thinking, rooted in a version of production reality. Headroom is surprisingly good through wide-opening butterfly doors, the cabin divided by a high-rise centre console into two distinct bathtubs of quilted leather. There’s a digital dial front and centre for speed, a triplet of round digital dials on top of the dash with a small screen underneath - about the size of a smartphone - that handles other functions and the physical HVAC controls. No big touchscreens bolted to the dash, but a digital landscape that apes the analogue.

Mind you, there would be no room for more high-defness - the canopy shape and truncated window line mean that the GT has the internal vision of a standard letterbox. And there’s no rear window, so you’ll be backing up via a rear camera displayed in the rear-view mirror. But again, the clarity of the details shine: Learjet-style sliding glass sun visors, chunky leather straps as door pulls, door and roof-mounted air vents. It looks a bit like a funky gentleman’s club, but all the practical elements are already integrated.

The Magma GT feels coherent in a way that some concept cars - even some production cars - don’t

The Magma GT feels coherent in a way that some concept cars - even some production cars - don’t. And the more time you spend with it, the better it gets. The GT feels real, and that makes it more interesting. The other hopeful thing here is that ninety per cent of Genesis’ current crop of ‘concepts’ also feel like they’re just a tweak and a homologation ticket away from production, where some contemporaries schedule fission-powered insanity merely to debut a new grille.

“We do not produce concepts just to entertain or for show business, they exist to tease future products. Even if I liked the Futurama concepts or the Seventies Carozzeria concepts, we have to do our homework before the spaceships. Genesis is a young brand - and we still have to do a lot of work to solidify it. Essentially, we have 20 years to do what other brands did in a century.”

Based on the success of the Magma GT - and the swathe of concept cars Genesis has recently debuted - it won’t take that long. And that’s why the Genesis Magma GT Concept wins Top Gear’s Design of the Year award for 2027; for future thinking that feels rooted in the present.