Last week, Genesis made quite a splash by unveiling its first full-scale GMR-001 hypercar in New York City. This brand new, low-slung beauty was showcased at the New York International Auto Show before heading off to compete in the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans next year.
Before this, Genesis had shown off an earlier version of the race car through its racing team, Genesis Magma Racing a year ago. The new prototype is all set for LMDh endurance racing, which means it’ll be not only part of the FIA World Endurance Championship—where the iconic Le Mans race takes place—but also the IMSA SportsCar Championship, known for epic races like the Rolex 24 at Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring.
“The GMR-001 Hypercar, like every race car, is a sculpture designed by the constraints of efficiency and performance—combined with the design DNA of Genesis—the brand with the Two Lines,” Donckerwolke said in a statement. “The livery is an orchestration of the tension and balance of the distinctly Korean character of the brand with gradients from Magma orange to dark red emphasizing the high temperature of the powertrain. And the color gradients from light to dark of the Magma writing in Hangeul is an optical doppler effect that expresses the glorious sound of the V-8 Twin Turbo engine in motion.”
With this hypercar, Genesis is proving it can go toe-to-toe with the big names in endurance racing while also looking to make its mark in the high-performance luxury car scene. Brands like Porsche, Toyota, and Audi have been ruling the World Endurance Championship lately, but Genesis is ready to shake things up.
The car’s design is really cool, pulling inspiration from the company’s Korean roots. It features a livery that includes Hangul lettering for “magma” (마그마), which gives it a unique touch. Luc Donckerwolke, the Chief Creative Officer at Genesis, led the team that crafted the sleek design, reminiscent of his iconic work on the Lamborghini Diablo and Gallardo.
The V-8 powerplant is built on the same basic design as the inline four-cylinder engine found in Hyundai Motorsport’s WRC racer. In fact, about 60 percent of the parts are the same, which shows how well they’re connected. The inline four engine follows the FIA’s Global Race Engine guidelines, making it a solid and tested base for the GMR-001 Hypercar’s engine. This setup not only highlights Hyundai’s clever engineering but also allows the hypercar to tap into proven technology while aiming for top performance in the racing world.
“The inline-four engine is a very, very sophisticated, very efficient engine,” said Hyundai Motorsport Technical Director François-Xavier Demaison. “It’s a proper race engine, so it’s a very good base for developing an engine for WEC. Rallying is a sort of endurance race, so for an engine to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, it’s a good place to start from.”
Demaison continued: “With the time we had available to develop the engine, we immediately knew we did not have enough time to completely design a new engine from scratch. For the main part of an engine, you need a long time to design, validate, and of course, to produce. Every part needs to be tested over many kilometers, and the inline-four engine from our World Rally Championship car has already been well proven. It became the logical step to carry over as many parts as possible from the four-cylinder engine.”
The successful first fire-up of the engine is a big win, marking the end of the initial development phase and kicking off the next stage. The team at Hyundai Motorsport, along with their friends at Genesis Magma Racing, is now gearing up for a series of bench tests on the engine. These tests are super important for checking how the engine performs and making sure it’s reliable under different conditions.
Once that’s sorted, they’ll move on to connect the engine to the car’s gearbox, which will bring everything together for power delivery. After that, they’ll hook it up to the hybrid unit that’s standard across all Le Mans Daytona h (LMDh) cars. This step-by-step plan is all about boosting the car’s performance and efficiency as they get ready to tackle upcoming races.
Abiteboul expanded on the future steps for the engine development, saying, “After the first crank and the first revs in a steady state, we will progressively add more heat into the system, performing long runs. Then with different dynos, we can test in a more dynamic way, reproducing closer the cycles that the engine will do around a race track like Le Mans. We can test equipped to the gearbox and the hybrid system until we have the full powertrain.”
With this new car, Genesis Magma Racing is taking a bold step forward. It’s all part of the brand’s new performance sub-brand, Magma, which is like how Mercedes has AMG and BMW has its M series. As Genesis dives into endurance racing and now with a notable appearance at the New York International Auto Show, they’re setting a goal to be put on equal footing with other high-end auto manufacturers like Porsche and Audi in the hearts and minds of the public.
