As I sat in my hotel after a long travel day last week, I reached that point of exhaustion when you’re too tired to go to bed. I slept about two hours on my flight to the 24 Hours of Le Mans, walked seven miles around Paris, and climbed the stairs of the Eiffel Tower because it was cheaper than the elevator. But when I saw new photos of the Genesis Magma GT supercar concept, which show the car’s interior for the first time, my drooping eyes flew open.
“IS THAT A GATED MANUAL SHIFTER?” I screeched to my empty room.
It was not. It was a gated automatic PRNDL.
Still, the Magma GT is one of the few modern concept cars that actually interests me. I’ve realized that interest is part of a bigger pattern: Genesis and its parent company, Hyundai, have made me believe in concept cars again. I didn’t think I ever would.
Genesis brought a group to France last week, including me, for the company’s debut in Le Mans’ top Hypercar class. The automaker originally showed off the exterior of its mid-engine Magma GT concept in November 2025, and the new interior photos came this week.
They preceded a real, physical version of the car on display at Le Mans, alongside a GT3 race-car concept. Both looked sick.
There are scarce details about what the Magma GT is and what its production counterpart could look like (or cost), but in a press conference about the car, Genesis leadership repeatedly said they want a production version to come soon.
The company has also said the mid-engine concept has a twin-turbocharged V8 engine “producing up to 800 horsepower.” That’s about all we know.
When I saw the Magma GT concept up close at Le Mans, it was exactly what I’ve come to expect from Genesis: a concept that looks like spaceship, but also a real car, similar to the iconic Lexus LC 500.
The GT’s green paint and bronze wheels were elegant, either in spite of or due to the fact that they’re a combination you can find on a slammed Toyota GR86. The suede and quilted leather inside looked soft, even if I couldn’t touch them. The gauge cluster included an analog tachometer instead of a digital one, which is a car feature I dearly miss. The cabin starkly separated the driver and passenger seats with a thick interior panel running through the center of the car, yet it somehow felt classy instead of isolating (like it feels on every other car with this feature). The only thing I didn’t love, aside from the fake gated manual, was the front grille, which looked plasticky because it had a matte-black finish.
Even if the Magma GT concept has a few features I’d change, it felt like a car that could actually exist one day. I’ve been covering cars since the early 2010s, and I’ve witnessed myself and my colleagues become more exhausted of concept cars. An automaker would create a “car” so outlandish that it was either too bold to be built by said company, too absurd to ever meet manufacturing or design regulations, or both.
Concept cars began to feel like a waste of space, because the companies showing them off watered down their production counterparts — if those counterparts ever came to be — to the point of being both uncool and unrecognizable. Concept cars are supposed to be design studies, but for years, they felt like vaporware.
Hyundai’s built some of my trust in concept cars back. When Hyundai, Genesis, or even Hyundai’s sister brand, Kia, debut a modern concept, that concept feels more like a promise — or at least a true design study — than a gimmick.
There are tons of modern examples for this. The Hyundai Prophecy concept became the Ioniq 6, which looks so funky that I still struggle to believe it’s a real car. The Hyundai Concept 45 became the all-electric Ioniq 5, whose performance N variant is beloved among car reviewers. The Kia Telluride concept became the production Telluride, a vehicle I immediately recommend to anyone in the market for a three-row SUV. The recent Ford Bronco-like Hyundai Boulder concept is supposed to preview future body-on-frame Hyundais, and like the Magma GT, it feels realistic.
Hyundai Motor Group, as a whole, seems to understand that winding up excitement with concept cars is useless without a plan to actually produce the features and design elements that make those concepts special. If a concept car or its essence never comes to pass, it’s just an empty promise.
My first reaction when I saw the Magma GT wasn’t to groan, like I did about concept cars for years. It was: “Wow, I can’t wait to see what this car becomes.”
If Hyundai’s track record is any indication, it’ll become the kind of concept-car-turned-sports-car that makes us all stop and stare. That’s exactly what concepts should be, and how they should make us feel.
[Ed note: I feel like another real test of this is going to be the Hyundai N Vision 74, which is one of the most successful and interesting concept cars produced in the last few years:
It looks kind of perfect, other than its hydrogen power supply (which it could ditch and no one would care). If Hyundai could somehow make this vehicle arrive, I think we’d all believe in chupacabra, yetis, the prospect of a Seattle Mariners pennant, or whatever other seemingly mythic concept they proposed. There’s also some indication that Hyundai might actually do it.
LFG – MH]
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