InsideLine, no strangers to luxury, recently put the Hyundai Genesis up against the kind of competition the Korean automaker wants to be associated with: the Lexus GS 350. The GS 300 first came out in 1993 and had the luxury re-defining LS and ES for siblings; at the time, Hyundai was still making do with Excel, Sonata, and Scoupe, and parking any of them next to a Lexus would have laid bare the gulf. Now the marques are going head-to-head. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call progress.

Still, issues of cost -- and perception -- skew the comparison slightly. The V8 Hyundai goes up against a V6 Lexus, because adding two more cylinders to the Lexus would have meant a $12,000 difference. As it is, there's still almost $8,000 between them. And there's the fact that the Lexus and the Hyundai don't exactly compete with each other (we'd have thought an ES comparo would make more sense) in brief, either.

Nevertheless, it's not a bad bout, and it turns out to be one of the closest fights InsideLine has ever judged. The Lexus gets a win-by-a-nose for things like fit and finish and speed, while the Hyundai returns the favor in the highway performance and space issues. The flying H takes home the silverware by a mere two points, aided in part by the price advantage -- which, as far as Hyundai's concerned, is the point. Follow the link for the full story.