Video: 2012 Hyundai Equus

If I want even more leg room, I can move the front passenger seat forward a little bit, as long as there's no one sitting there with these controls here. Heck, I can even raise the window on the opposite side with my own window switches here. It's not exactly what you'd expect coming from Hyundai. This is the same company that makes a $15,000 Accent after all. (door slams) But this isn't the Accent, this is the Equus. This is a luxury flagship from the automaker that Hyundai shoppers in the United States haven't seen until recently. From 2012, the Equus has a new five liter direct injection V8 tide with an eight speed automatic transmission. That's usually the sort of technology you see from brands like BMW and Lexus. Hyundai says it can compete with the best of them. Well, can it? We'll cover the Equus's hits and misses and talk about whether there's enough of a market for Hyundai to sell cars like this. The Equus is a big car, about 203 inches from bumper to bumper. That's about seven inches longer than Hyundai's less expensive Genesis luxury sedan. The drive train feels up to the task though. Last year's Equus had a 385 horsepower, 4.6 liter V8, and it was pretty quick. This year Hyundai's replaced that with the five liter, which the company says is it's most powerful engine ever. At 429 horsepower, it launches the car with authority after a moment of accelerator lag off the line. Ride quality is also very good. The echos gets an adaptive air suspension with regular and sport modes, it filters out bumps quite well. Perhaps not as good as Mercedes's exceptional aromatic suspension, which is like driving on a freaking cloud, but pretty comfortable. The fact is, Hyundai says the Equus should have the same draw as a Mercedes S-Class, but it competes in price more with midsize luxury cars. Cars like the E-Class, the BMW 5 Series, the Lexus GS. So how does it hold up? Well, pretty good in some areas. There is lots of eye candy, stitched leather across the dashboard and along the steering wheel hub is pretty nice quality stuff, but there's a lot of fake metal going on here. There's just painted plastic panels along the center of the dashboard here and along the door handles. We wish that Hyundai had put in real metal or chrome in some of those areas. You get to some other stuff too. The turn signal stalks feel a little bit flimsy. They don't have that weighty precision that you get in a Lexus or a Mercedes. The center armrest here does seem kind of thinly padded. You just go down a couple of millimeters and you're already hitting a hard surface with your elbow there. Now a lot of European luxury cars have terrible cup holders. So it seems like Hyundai is taking a page out of that book. These are just too close together. We couldn't fit two large Starbucks beverages in there. Finally, there's a connection here to plug in your iPod or iPhone, but you can't stream music off of an iPhone, which ironically, a lot of cheaper Hyundais allow for. These are all small issues, but if you're playing with the big guys, you've got to sweat the details. Still the Equus drives well and comes loaded with standard features. It's biggest issue might be well, that it's a Hyundai. Folks had trouble buying the Phaeton from Volkswagen because it was a $65,000 VW. Can they stomach a car that costs that much from Hyundai? Well, the automaker offers things like a personal valet for service appointments and even test drives but how much interest has that really driven? Through the first half of 2012, Mercedes has sold about three S-Classes and 15 E-Classes for every Equus that Hyundai has moved. The drive train improvements amplify a car that has a lot of appeal, but I question whether there's enough of a market for a Hyundai at this price. (soft upbeat music) <v Announcer>For more car related news, go to cars.com or our blog, kickingtires.net.