Genesis has a mid-engine, twin-turbo V8 supercar that its US site says makes up to 800 horsepower. Top Gear just named it Design of the Year. Officially, it is still a concept, and you cannot order one.
Genesis would like you to know it has a mid-engine V8 supercar. A pretty one, too. On Nov 5, 2026, Top Gear named the Magma GT Concept Design of the Year in its U.S. Car Awards, and Genesis confirmed the honor the next day. The company's own US site says the twin-turbo V8 makes up to 800 horsepower.
There is only one catch. That same US page still labels it a concept vehicle that is not for sale.
That has not stopped people from writing about it as if you could put a deposit down tomorrow. Supercar Blondie ran a piece on Nov 13 calling it an 800-horsepower V8 supercar that could rival Ferrari and Porsche. The car is real enough to look at, sit in, and even drive up a hill in Italy. A production version, a price, and a US or Canadian on-sale date? Genesis has not confirmed any of that.
Genesis first pulled the covers off the Magma GT Concept on Nov 20, 2025, at Circuit Paul Ricard in Le Castellet, France, during its Magma World Premiere (Genesis newsroom). It called the car its first "pure sports car typology" and the halo for a new performance decade. The original show car wore a bright orange finish and sat under a screen that read Genesis Magma World Premiere. Not subtle. We liked that.
At Le Mans on June 12, 2026, Genesis brought the road car back with a revised exterior and an all-new interior, and parked it next to the Magma GT3 Concept (Genesis newsroom). Then, on Sept 14, 2026, it ran the road car up the 9-kilometer (about 5.6-mile) Tutto Bene hillclimb on Mottarone in Italy (Genesis newsroom). That is the moment this stopped being a pretty statue.
Top Gear was at the Paul Ricard reveal, and design boss Luc Donckerwolke told the magazine the car would use the 3.2-liter twin-turbo V8 Genesis built for its GMR-001 Le Mans Hypercar, "by sticking two 1.6-liter four-pot Hyundai rally engines together." He also said the road car would get a hybrid system, like a Ferrari 296 or a McLaren Artura. Autocar, talking to him at the same event, got a more cautious line: the show car had a V8, but the production powertrain was not locked.
So Blondie's "rumored" V8 and "speculation about electric assistance" undersells what Top Gear was told, and oversells how official it is. The 800-horsepower figure is not a rumor. It is on Genesis's own US site, for a concept. Displacement, hybrid hardware, and a finished production engine still sit in the gap between a designer talking to magazines and a completed press kit. For the record, Hyundai Motorsport lists the GMR-001's engine as a Genesis G8MR 3.2-liter turbo V8 rated at 680 horsepower. That is the race hypercar, not the Magma GT.
The Le Mans interior is the part that made me sit up. Genesis describes two separate cockpits, a driver-focused layout, tactile controls, and an analog-style instrument cluster inspired by racing timekeeping. After spending time with the car, Top Gear's Tom Ford noted the practical oddities too: butterfly doors, a small screen instead of a giant tablet on the dash, and no rear window, so you reverse with a camera in the rear-view mirror.
And then there is the shifter. It looks like a gated manual until you notice the letters: P, R, N, D, and I. Edmunds has described it as a gated automatic, and that matches the two-pedal layout in the official photos. I still want one. I just would not brag about heel-and-toe.
Genesis is already racing the GMR-001 Hypercar in the FIA World Endurance Championship, and the team finished the 24 Hours of Le Mans on its first try, with the No. 19 car in 13th (Genesis newsroom). The Magma GT3 Concept, shown at Le Mans in June, is a different idea: a customer-style GT racer with the road car's silhouette, plus wider tracks, a fixed rear wing, and more aero. Genesis says it was designed to GT3 rules from the start, "rather than being derived from an existing road-going model," and that it "remains under exploration."
We covered that race-car side in our Magma GT3 Concept story after the orange GT3 turned up in Milan. This one is about the road car those wings are pointing at.
Racing is also the practical reason to build a street version. Donckerwolke told Top Gear he wants Genesis in customer GT3 racing, which means a homologated road car. Autocar reported he said the rules require 250 road-legal cars, and that the Magma GT would be offered in greater volume. Top Gear put that minimum at "at least 200 units," while Edmunds and Chasing Cars have used 300 a year. The exact number matters less than the idea: a GT3 program needs a real production car. Hyundai Motorsport chairman Cyril Abiteboul told Edmunds, "If there is a production car, there will be a racing car." Charles Fuster, Genesis's brand director for Italy and France, told Motor1 Italy the car "isn't a temporary exercise," and that "we'd like to get there soon," without giving a date, as Motor1 later reported.
Hyundai CEO José Muñoz told Edmunds in June 2026 that the project has to pass scientific, technical, and financial feasibility, and that the first two were achieved. The third, the money, was still the open question. Edmunds reported the program will not be allowed to lose money, and that demand from dealers and customers, especially in the US and South Korea, will help decide it. On price, Muñoz said, "we definitely want to be competitive."
Autocar has suggested a launch sometime after 2027. Carscoops has cited reports of 2027 or 2028. Car and Driver has said by 2030. Genesis itself has not given a year.
If this lands anywhere near the cars it would actually fight, the neighborhood is already on our price guides. As of Nov 13, 2026, our Ferrari 296 GTB price guide shows a median asking price of $350,062 across 83 cars for sale in the US and Canada. Our McLaren Artura coupe price guide sits at $188,063, across 69 priced cars out of 70 for sale. Those are asking prices, not sale prices, and they are only a map of the mid-engine hybrid neighborhood. Genesis has not said the Magma GT will cost anything like either number.
Yes. Obviously.
I like that Genesis did not try to out-shout a Lamborghini. The green road car looks expensive and a little quiet, which is a fun trick for something with a twin-turbo V8 behind your shoulders. I like the cabin even more than the body. And I like that they bothered to drive it up a mountain in Italy instead of leaving it on a turntable.
Would I send a deposit today if they opened the books? Also yes. I would still want to know the production engine, the price, and whether the US and Canada are actually getting one before I got too carried away. For now, it is an 800-horsepower idea with a beautiful body and a very real V8 soundtrack. If Genesis can get the financial part over the line, this is the halo the brand has been hinting at for a year. If it cannot, we will have a lot of pretty photos of a car that got away.
Genesis's orange Magma GT3 Concept, the race-car twin of its planned mid-engine V8 supercar, turned up outside a Milan boutique on Oct 26, 2026. Here's what Genesis has confirmed, what's only been reported, and why a Hyundai-family supercar matters to buyers in the US and Canada.
