The Genesis G70 Track Day Special Goes Full Race Car With A Roll Cage And Everything

From ultra-hot hatchbacks to hypercars, the big thing in enthusiast cars right now is models made for the track. It’s why the Porsche 911 GT3 RS is arguably the hottest car out right now, why the Honda Civic Type R is still commanding crazy pricing, and why the BMW M4 CSL sold out in a flash. With a recently announced endurance racing program, the time seems right for Genesis to dip its toes into the pool of late apexes and overtakes, and the G70 Track Day Special Concept looks like a serious letter of intent.

By now, we’re familiar with the Genesis G70, a great little compact sport sedan that’s seen plenty of tweaks over the years. Updated styling, interior fixtures, damping, and a new 2.5-liter turbocharged four-cylinder base powertrain have kept it in the game, offering a punchy left-field alternative to the pricey, somewhat numb, tech-bloated BMW 3 Series. Genesis has always offered a variety of performance options on the G70, from Brembo calipers to an electronically variable limited-slip rear differential, but this G70 Track Day Special Concept straight-up cranks the knobs off.

I mean, just look at it. It makes the high-performance concepts we’ve seen from Germany and Japan seem a bit tame. Canards? Check. A front splitter? Check. Hood vents? Yep. A wing seemingly stolen from a hypercar? You bet. Basically, the Genesis G70 Track Day Special Concept takes the G70 Nürburgring Taxi to its logical touring car-inspired conclusion, so it’s understandable that it went with an inverted livery of a matte black body with magma orange accents.

Beyond all the aero additions, the G70 Track Day Special features massive negative camber up front for better grip at the expense of tire life and some high-speed straight-line stability and exposed recovery points for when you run out of talent. Unusually, it’s running on Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires, ultra-high-performance summer rubber and not extra-sticky 200-ish-treadwear rollers like a Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2. As Marcus Willhardt, Chief Driver and Operation Director of the Genesis Track Taxi program notes, “In sum, the Pilot Sport 4S is a better fit for the Nordschleife and the Track Taxi program as it performs well in both dry and wet conditions and is less temperature-sensitive than semi-slicks.” Given how weather at the ‘Ring can be completely different depending on which part of the track you’re on, the versatility of a max performance summer tire makes sense.

While the renderings of the G70 Track Day Special Concept look at bit “Gran Turismo”, I’m happy to report that it looks pretty much exactly like this in real life, and it’s making its public debut in Canada. That might seem a bit odd, but Canada’s historically been an important market not just for performance luxury cars, but for Genesis. Before the diet AMGs like the six-cylinder C43, Canada had the highest AMG product mix of any country in the world, and Genesis’ agency-style launch into Canada has helped it just keep gaining market share.

Here’s something you can’t see from the renderings—the cabin of the G70 Track Day Special has also gone full race car, with a complete roll cage, racing harnesses, proper fixed-back bucket seats, and a special rectangular steering wheel with knobs and displays in the middle instead of an airbag. Hey, when you’re clipped into your HANS device, you aren’t going anywhere, so you don’t need airbags.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Genesis G70 Track Day Special isn’t how all-out Genesis has gone, but how Genesis rarely does things purely on a whim. The Genesis X concept of 2021 has since evolved into something that looks near-production, the GV80 Coupe Concept became an actual production car, and the initial Magma concepts have turned into a full-on WEC Hypercar effort, with roadgoing Magma models on the way. If the G70 Track Day Special follows this sort of pattern as a glimpse of things to come, the future is looking incredibly exciting.

Top graphic credit: Genesis