Join the Q: New Genesis GV70 faces Audi Q5

The Genesis’s 2.2-litre diesel makes 207bhp while the Q5, facelifted late last year, is a 40 TDI, a £45,235 S line with options taking it to £54,465. Its 2.0-litre makes 201bhp, but its response is augmented slightly at low revs with a 12V mild-hybrid starter-generator that chips in while the turbo is spooling. Both cars are four-wheel drive and have longitudinally mounted engines, but the Genesis is predominantly rear-wheel drive, via an eight-speed torque-converter automatic, with the front axle occasionally receiving torque when needed. The Audi’s lengthways engine orientation, meanwhile, is a red herring – plenty of cars on this platform are front-driven only. Via a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic, this is a ‘mostly front-drive but sometimes thinking about the rear’ kind of car.

If you want to get a feel for how important – or otherwise – Europe is in Genesis terms, take a look at the design. That big, chrome-laden smiling grille, the up-and-over chrome stripes and a waistband falling towards what one colleague unkindly compared to a Ssangyong Rodius rear. I don’t mind it, but subtle Euro-chic it isn’t.

Open the door and it’s the same. Genesis has gone to a great effort to make the GV70 feel plush: there are only tiny areas of black plastic, a dearth of brittle plastics and instead an array of plum and grey leather and satin metallics. In places – the steering wheel, for one – it’s weird, but it’s very clean, and I mean it as a compliment when I say there’s a touch of concept car about it.

Besides, maybe the fact that it feels less ‘Euro’ matters less than it once would have. But Mercedes is swaying away from trad materials and today’s proliferation of electronics and user interfaces are generally world-friendly: you’ll look at the same screen wherever on the planet you buy your gadgets. With the leather and a big soft-tone screen, this is more American golf club luxe; it doesn’t have the ambience of an appliance.

The Audi is more conservative, more conventionally European in feel. More black. More austere. More precise. Most customers won’t be accustomed to lots of other Volkswagen Group products, but if you are, this is yet another one out of the big VW playbook. There are soft-feel plastics on the door tops and dash, and tight and consistent finishes. But there’s a point in the cabin – generally where that big metallic strip lies – below which the plastics turn harder and more scratchy.

How you call your preference between the two depends on your own taste. Ergonomically it’s similar: they each have their merits.

The Genesis has a relatively car-like relaxed driving position, more so than the Audi’s. There’s more of a saloon vibe, even though the Q5 is only 10mm taller overall (they’re 1659mm and 1649mm). And while the GV70’s thick-spoke steering wheel is as weird to hold as it is to look at, on the dash there is a rotary controller for the gearshift and a separate one – with push-down and touchpad elements, plus some shortcuts – for the infotainment. Praise be, even if they are so close to each other that you’ll sometimes grab the wrong one. One of those ‘you get used to it’ things that you honestly shouldn’t have to.

There’s a lot of head room in the Genesis’s front seats, likewise in the rear for three people, good rear leg room and a 542-litre boot, expanding to a seats-down 1678 litres, beneath the floor of which you can stow the parcel shelf.

The Audi feels more like an SUV. That, perhaps, remains part of its appeal, but I don’t think it’s any more airy for it. In both cars, the window line is at around shoulder-injection height, but the Q5’s is a more upright driving position and you can still see a bit of bonnet. Again, the back is spacious – adults will fit easily behind front-seat adults – while the boot expands from 550 to 1550 litres. The Q5, like the Genesis, retains proper separate switches for the climate control, but most of the rest have moved to the central touchscreen (the Genesis’s is 14.5in to the Audi’s 10.1in). The GV70’s is too big a stretch from the driver to be safely usable on the move – hence the rotary dial – but of the two it’s the warmer, more imaginative screen to look at. Flick it onto a neutral screen when you’re mooching and it shows a gentle mountainscape with a soft overview of the route map. Pretty.

Its separate control pad also gives it a genuine ergonomic advantage over the Audi’s smaller, more clinical display, which is all touch controlled. Unhelpfully for the Q5, I had just spent time in a Q2, which retains a separate dial and is all the better for it. If this stuff matters to you – and I can see it might – it could be what clinches it for the GV70 over the Audi. You and I, mind, probably care about more than just that. So, to the way they drive.

Both cars have quiet engines. The Genesis has a curious high-pitched squirrelly whistle that I don’t think is turbo because it changes with revs, not throttle opening. But it’s sufficiently muted not to be intrusive, and it drives through an automatic transmission that, in normal circumstances, would give refinement advantages over the Audi’s dual-clutch unit. Certainly, the GV70 creeps very easily and can be brought deftly to a halt.

This Audi, though, has that 12V mild-hybrid system. Under steady acceleration it is impeccably smooth and so relaxed that a passenger who didn’t know much better asked if the Q5 was electric.

Both cars let you take control of the gears via paddles, but only the Audi lets you retain it indefinitely; the GV70 quickly reverts to Drive. And given that I saw around 40mpg in each (they didn’t complete exactly the same route; officially the Audi is a 44.8mpg car and Genesis a 38.0- 40.0mpg one), it’s honours even from a drivetrain perspective. The Genesis doesn’t do things the same way as its competitors, but it keeps coming up as good as them.