As I mentioned in my last blog I haven’t been able to play too many tournaments this month, as I had to go home two weekends for both parents’ birthdays.  I did get to play a couple things this past weekend, which included a couple WSOP sats which I was lucky enough to donk into a seat in one of.  Pretty sick too, because I was down to 3 BB in one of them at a pretty early level and doubled up twice and got back into it and went on to get a seat.  So I’ll be there in July, nitting it up and folding into day 2 and blinding off I’m sure.  Look forward to exciting updates about Vegas!!

In other non poker news, I went and test drove the Hyundai Genesis V8 when my local dealership got one in.

This is the car I mentioned wanting to get in my blog before and got made fun of about it a lot for it being a Hyundai.  Obviously, I don’t really care about badge or brand as I’m seriously considering buying a Hyundai and most people would never consider it, but it is a really good car.  I discovered this site recently, motormouths.com, which is sort of like Metacritic but for cars.  It gives you an average score of all the published reivews it can find of each car, and lets you read all of them.  The Genesis has an average rating of 89/100, which puts it tied for 2nd best Sedan, tied with the Pontiac G8 GT and behind the BMW M3.  Pretty good company to keep.   It’s obviously taking cost into account though, because it’s above a Mercedes S-Class and it would be silly to suggest that either of those cars are better than an S-class.  However, they’re like $40k each and the S is $90k, so I think it is very fair to say they’re at least like 80% as good for half the price.

Here is a link to the page with the reviews of it in case anyone is curious:

http://motormouths.com/car/hyundai/genesis

So anyway, I took it out and drove it about 15 miles on highways and through bumpy roads on the UNC campus, pretty much all around, and here are my impressions:
- Engine: Great.  370 bhp is massive for a car that only costs $42k fully loaded with every option, which brings me to:

- Features: Great.  Built in nav, super sharp LCD screen, heated & cooled seats, very intuitive iDrive like interface that’s actually useable because of the shortcut buttons around the knob making all the functions a maximum of 2 clicks away.  Voice activation of all major functions, bluetooth integration, iPod integration, keyless start, etc.

- Comfort:  Great.  Super soft leather seats more comfortable than any Lexus or Cadillac I’ve been in.  The car is also huge and offers tons of legroom and headroom.

- Handling/Steering: Average.  Good for a car this size, handles better than the Lexus LS 430 I tested last year, and actually has a rather sharp turning circle for such a big car (17.8 feet, roughly equal to a BMW 5 series), but the steering does feel a little numb.  However, the steering is well-weighted which I liked.  I don’t really like cars where you can fling the wheel around with no effort, and so I was happily surprised that they went with a medium-to-heavy steering effort.
Before anyone accuses me of gushing too much and saying I am just a huge Genesis apologist, I will tell you this:

I didn’t buy one.   And I won’t, until at least next year.  There are a few small problems or features missing that I would like.  The first is a heated steering wheel.  This is going to sound really stupid to anyone who’s never had one but the first time you get into a car when it’s ten degrees outside and your wheel heats up and your whole body just feels nice because of that warmth coming from it you will never want to not have one again, I promise.  I know Cadillac also offers this, but BMW has for years and I don’t know why more companies don’t offer it.  It’s a relatively small thing that makes a huge difference when it’s freezing out.   I would also like rear heated seats for the sake of people with me, mainly because it seems like most other cars in the premium luxury class offer this, but it’s not a huge deal because I don’t really give a fuck about people in my back seat.  If they were important they’d be in the front seat.

There’s a couple more small issues too.  If you are scrolling through a large list of tracks on the iPod, it scrolls kinda slowly and doesn’t accelerate.  Also it uses firewire to charge so it won’t charge an iPhone 3G.

The big main reason I won’t buy one though is the suspension.  It’s fine on normal surfaces and even is rather firm in the style of a sports car but the probelm is when you get to a rough road, it bounces all over the goddamn place in a way that you would never expect from a car that’s this nice otherwise.  If you take it on a rough road you feel like you’re in a golf cart.  My BMW has a had suspension like it and never does this, and I have also driven a Cadillac Fleetwood which has the softest suspension ever made and it never did anything like this, so there’s something actually wrong with the suspension I think that needs to be addressed.  They changed the suspension when they brought the car over from Korea, and I think they just didn’t really work out the kinks in it before releasing it in America.  It’s something that I just couldn’t live with on a day to day basis, but I’m really excited for how good this car will be with a proper retuned suspension in it.  According to a Genesis owners forum post I read, they are redoing the suspension for 2010, so if that’s the case, if the suspension really does turn out to be fine, I’ll definitely get one.  It’s a superb car otherwise.  If they don’t, I guess I’ll just join all the old people and get a used Merc S-class or something.  By then a 2007 S550 will probably be around $50k anyway, which isn’t a huge difference.  I really do hope they fix it though, because you get a huge amount of car for a relatively small amount of money with this thing.