The story of Equus begins with its platform-mate, the Hyundai Genesis. When I joined Hyundai in early 2004, the company had already begun the planning for this bold product — a rear-wheel-drive, premium sport sedan designed to take on the BMW 5 Series, Lexus GS and Mercedes-Benz E-Class. We ended up spending a much longer than usual amount of time in the product development process with Genesis.
Why? Well, we had a lot to learn, for one thing. Engineering a premium rear-wheel-drive platform brings a unique set of technical challenges compared to the front-wheel-drive platforms we'd grown quite capable of developing. And the Genesis program included our first homegrown V8 engine, known as Tau. Yes, Genesis was a big deal internally, and there was an extraordinary focus to ensure we got things right. We had the time we needed and the budget we needed to design and develop a flexible, world-class, rear-wheel-drive platform that would eventually spawn at least three unique products. These were exciting times at our global research and development facilities, and we were extremely focused on delivering products that would wipe clean any preconceptions about what Hyundai was capable of doing.
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