Burn After Repairing? Our Genesis G90’s Weird Issue Took 60 Days to Fix
A humongous chunk of that downtime wasn’t the car’s fault, though.
We first noticed the odd vibration in our yearlong review 2023 Genesis G90 shortly after taking possession of the luxury sedan a year ago, when we were leaving Los Angeles on our way to our 2023 Car of the Year’s future home in Texas. It was only a passing judder through the steering wheel that felt faintly like wheel flutter. Then it was gone. At the time we figured maybe we’d driven over some road reflectors, those raised bumps between lane markers, without realizing it.
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Some 10,000 miles and several months later, the once intermittent issue grew more prominent, such that any time we turned right, a rhythmic thumping sensation emanated from the front-left corner of the G90. At much lower speeds, like when parking, a seemingly separate vibration—more like a buzz—would sometimes come in and out, felt through the steering wheel, pedals, and seat. As the problem worsened, those low-speed vibes floated in and out while the Genesis sat stationary, in park, drive, or reverse. It was time for a proper diagnosis—an appointment was made with our local dealer for December 7, we dropped the G90 off at the service bay and waited for resolution. And then we kept waiting. And waiting. If you skip ahead to the specifications panel at the bottom of this page, where we list the G90’s time out of service—a whopping 60 days—you’ll get an idea of just how long we waited. So, what happened?
Like Sands Through the Hourglass
Before this adventure in patience, our G90 had spent 15 days away from us, through no fault of its own or us, receiving bodywork and a repaint following a minor accident (it therefore goes uncounted in our out-of-service tally). The other 60 days are owed to the diagnosis, misdiagnosis, and—eventually—repair of those persistent front-end issues. In many ways, and much like the earlier crash repair, the time out of service had little to do with the G90 itself. The whole experience was just … bizarre.
Now, we’re the first to admit that hard-to-pin-down, intermittent mechanical or software issues can be nightmares for dealership technicians to hunt down. Too often, customers don’t speak “mechanic,” and even if they can cogently outline what’s going on, intermittent problems like those we were experiencing with the Genesis are just that, frequently failing to repeat themselves for technicians. And modern cars are far more complicated than ever before, especially flagship luxury products. So, we fully anticipated a call a few days after dropping our car off on December 7 saying the G90 could be picked up because the issue couldn’t be replicated.
Complicating things further, we had numerous theories about what was causing the low-speed vibration and wheel thump issues; for starters, we thought the two problems weren’t related. Maybe the front left wheel was slightly bent thanks to some cruel pothole, and separately there was an idle fault causing the engine to buzz weirdly. We’d jotted down our notes and given them to the service advisor assigned to our diagnosis at the Genesis dealer; more critically, we even showed the advisor the issue when we dropped the car off. The problem seeming obvious and repeatable, we felt our chances of a timely diagnosis were good.
It Turns Out, They Weren’t
We’re not in the business of rating individual dealerships, so we won’t do that here. Franchise car stores are, by design, entirely independent of the automakers they’re associated with and of each other. But suffice it to say our experience at the first dealer we took this problem to was abhorrent—not just for a luxury make, or a luxury make like Genesis looking to break in with the legacy players, but generally.
Investigation into the issues was scheduled as part of a broader service visit to address an outstanding recall (NHTSA’s notice says the G90’s seat belt pretensioners could “explode,” so they were replaced) and to fit two OE-spec front tires after a pothole blew out the front-right tire far from home at around the 17,000-mile mark, forcing the fitment of a correctly sized but not-OE tire in order to make the trip from Detroit back to Texas in the spare-tire-less G90. Those two services were handled within a few days of dropping the Genesis off; the diagnosis would drag on for nearly six more weeks.
Our biggest complaint—other than the agonizing length of the G90’s service visit—was communication with the dealer’s service department, which was terrible. Our constant check-ins requesting updates on the G90’s status would go days at a time without a response. Worse, attempts at reaching higher-level employees were stymied by a phone system designed to steer customers back to their originally assigned service advisor—the same person we were having a hard time reaching.
It also seemed the dealer’s technician only worked part time on Genesis models—our advisor hinted as much. This location is mainly a Hyundai store in the process of spinning off a standalone Genesis dealership. Work on our G90 came in small bursts, with long dormant periods in between. We know this because the Genesis owner’s app allows us to keep tabs on the G90’s odometer reading, fuel level, whether it is being driven, whether its hood or doors are open, and so on. In the first month the Genesis was away, it accumulated only a handful of miles. Remotely accessing the surround-view camera showed it often parked in the same spot in a crowded lot of other Hyundai and Genesis products surrounding the dealer’s service garage. We’d like to think it became friends with the last-generation Sonata it cozied up to for weeks.
The Long Timeline
Here's what that experience looked like from our end: One week after dropping off the G90, despite having demonstrated the issue, we were told the problem couldn’t be replicated, and pending some paperwork, the car could be picked up (our expected result, really). The next few days we spent trying to contact the dealer for said paperwork and confirm we could retrieve the G90, until we were told the problem actually had been replicated and the car was being held for further testing and that the mechanic was consulting with Hyundai’s tech line.
Two weeks post-drop-off, the service advisor told us the tech would try a fuel quality test and, later, that a Genesis engineer would be dispatched to look at the G90 the day after Christmas. That day came and went without an update, followed by a week of fruitless check-ins before we learned most of the service department (including our advisor, who promised the update) was gone for the holidays, that there was no record of an engineer visiting or doing anything with the G90, and to check back in after the New Year. That check-in and several others went without a response, and one month on, our frustration hit a boiling point.
Look, if we may place our pretend-owner-of-a-$100,000-car hat on our heads for a moment, what luxury customer would put in this kind of work chasing down a service department for basic status updates on their car for the better part of several weeks? We hounded the dealer like it was our job, because it is our job.
Since we like our pretend-rich-person hats, thank you, we did what rich people do when facing retail problems, college admissions, and general adversity: called in a favor. That favor looked a lot like Genesis’ PR department, which we looped in hoping to see if someone at the automaker could tell us what was happening on its side—whether its engineers were actually involved, and if so, when—that kind of thing. On some level, we also hoped this might lead to an important person calling the dealership and stirring the pot outside of the semi-automated phone system.
The Fix Is … In?
From that day on, things suddenly started moving more quickly for our G90. The dealer’s general manager and service director reached out to apologize for the poor communication and hard-to-get behavior and promised to get work moving on our car ASAP. We were given the most detailed information yet: Way back on December 13, before we’d been told the problem was replicated, the technician unearthed the trouble code “P111,” a powertrain code that is unlisted in their dealer materials and necessitated a call to Genesis’ internal engineering hotline for assistance, though it wasn’t clear why this didn’t lead to any action beyond a “fuel test,” nor why it took another week for us to be informed.
On January 4, the day after Genesis’ involvement, the mechanic reconnected with the tech line, which suggested an engine “combustion chamber cleaning.” Another week went by, and more of our requests for updates went unanswered before we learned the internal technical service bulletin (TSB) used for the process only applies to four-cylinder engines and therefore needed to be modified by the mechanic to suit our G90’s V-6. Similarly, the dealer lacked the hardware to properly “agitate” the engine to break up the carbon deposits apparently within—no equipment for six- or eight-cylinder engines was on hand. The tech said they’d try their best, even though they thought the cleaning was “a shot in the dark.”
Several more days went by, and after requesting images of the fix—which also includes cleaning, but not replacing, the spark plugs, along with (possibly) some head machining—we received pictures of the spark plugs, which appeared fouled and sooty, with no mention of their fouling or what could have caused it. After some shakedown driving, the technician declared the trouble code was gone, the car was acting normally, and we could pick it up January 19—six weeks after dropping it off December 7.
Our elation at getting the G90 back faded quickly, though. Upon arriving home, we noticed the G90’s power rear sunshade lying crumpled on the rear parcel shelf, off its tracks. It wasn’t visible from the driver’s seat, and we hadn’t spotted it when we were at the dealer. It had been removed along with the rear pillar trim during the seat belt pretensioner recall fix but inexplicably wasn’t reassembled all the way. And it sat like that for weeks, going unnoticed by staff or the detailer the dealer hired to clean the car at the end of its internment. So, back to the dealer the G90 went, where the pillar trim and rear seats were removed and reassembled properly. Our Genesis G90 was out of our hands for 46 days at this point.
We reached out to the dealer multiple times for its side of the story, any explanation at all for the wait, or time cards to show what work was performed and when, and never got a response. Piecing things together on our own, using our communications with the dealer and Genesis’ account of the tech line activity, the dealer tech simply never called the engineers back to report their fuel test findings or request next steps. That oversight’s time penalty was then extended by the holidays, when many staffers were understandably gone. Like we said, the whole thing was just bizarre, and we’re less upset about the time out of service than the lack of clarity as to why. It seemed like the car had been forgotten about, which is strange, because it’s a matte-gray six-figure limousine loitering among, well, a bunch of Hyundais.
Except One Quick Thing…
To top it off, the original problem wasn’t fixed. Not long after we got the G90 back for the second time, the thumping sensation while turning right and the low-speed buzz reappeared with a vengeance. We captured the phenomenon on video during preparations for a separate G90 story (it sounds like the car was driving over rumble strips, even when stationary!), and, wanting closure for our otherwise lovely sedan, braced ourselves to send it back to a service bay.
This time, we went with a different dealer—fool us once for 46 days, you know—a primarily Hyundai store that also sells Genesis models, and worked with Genesis to ensure an engineer actually met the car on site, something that apparently never happened at the other dealer. After studying the car the next day, a Friday, the engineer quickly found the issue: The front left axle (remember, the G90 is all-wheel drive) was binding and had a “foreign body” in it, allowing metal-on-metal contact, it seems, around the spline area. Our initial suspicions about the issue were wrong; the bent-wheel feeling and the buzzing were linked. The former was the result of binding at higher speeds, while the latter was from that errant contact between parts that shouldn’t be touching, thus transmitting engine vibration directly through the axle and suspension to the steering wheel and floor, even when stationary. A new axle was ordered, and the rest of the G90’s days out of service were spent waiting on those parts to arrive from Korea and be installed, which took about a week. Our beautiful G90 sedan is now back and buttery smooth, just as it should be.
Our Genesis G90’s diagnosis and repair didn’t cost us anything—it was all under warranty—but ends the same as the schadenfreude-filled Coen brothers movie Burn After Reading, when one character declares “Jesus, what a clusterf--k!,” before asking another, “What did we learn?” The other character answers: “I don’t know, sir.” The two agree, and that’s it. If it’s an unsatisfying ending, well, that’s all we got.
One Genesis dealer isn’t very good at service communication or, apparently, diagnosis, and eventually lumbered down a dead end with that whole combustion chamber thing. The other dealer is excellent at communication, and it made a bay and a mechanic available for Genesis’ regional field service engineer, the same person, we figure, who should have been roped in early by the first dealer. The second dealer’s service director also stated the obvious: that it would have pulled the engineer in as soon as its techs couldn’t diagnose an issue, reinforcing the notion our car’s problem could and should have been a one- or two-week journey, not the apathy-drenched saga it turned out to be.
As for the G90’s axle, it’s not been determined whether the binding and foreign body it harbored were manufacturing defects or the result of prior damage—our test car was formerly in Genesis’ press fleet before we got it. We therefore came away with neither greater insights into Genesis’ budding standalone dealer network nor in the G90’s reliability, which outside of this axle problem, has been sparkling. When it was finally back in our hands, for good, we learned only how much we missed the car during its lengthy captivity.
The G90 simply is on a different level from the rest of Genesis’ already good products, which we were reminded of after hosting several of them as loaner vehicles during this process. One, the smaller G80 sedan we were given first, was around long enough that it, not our G90, is the car that shows up parked in front of my house on Google Maps street view.
More On Our Long-Term 2023 Genesis G90:
- Damn You People, Go Back to Your Shanties!
- Highway Driving Assist II: Not Driving Is a Luxury
- Candles That Smell Like the Car? Really?
- Tiny Fender Bender, Big Buck Repair
- Our G90 Perfumes Its Cabin (Yep!)
- The Key to Enjoying Our G90? No Key at All
- How Are Those Power-Closing Doors Holding Up?
- Does the Onboard Sterilizer Clean a Phone?
A lifelong car enthusiast, I stumbled into this line of work essentially by accident after discovering a job posting for an intern position at Car and Driver while at college. My start may have been a compelling alternative to working in a University of Michigan dining hall, but a decade and a half later, here I am reviewing cars; judging our Car, Truck, and Performance Vehicle of the Year contests; and shaping MotorTrend’s daily coverage of the automotive industry.
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