Going fast. And paying attention to detail. . .
By Gary S. Vasilash
Because of the seemingly obligatory nature of being a luxury brand and having a racing team of some sort—in this case, Genesis Magma Racing participating in the 2025 European Le Mans Series with an objective to compete in the FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC) in 2026 and the IMSA SportsCar Championship (IMSA) in 2027—the company has developed a LMDh endurance prototype hypercar that is intended to be the precursor to a bona fide vehicle that will run in the WEC and IMSA events in the future.
Of the vehicle, which was designed at Genesis Design Europe, Luc Donckerwolke, Genesis Chief Creative Officer, said, “The GMR-001 Hypercar, like every race car, is a sculpture designed by the constraints of efficiency and performance – combined with the design DNA of Genesis – the brand with the Two Lines.”
The two lines mentioned are the lighting signatures, both front and rear.
While there was particular attention paid to making the vehicle as aerodynamic as possible, there are a couple of interesting non-aero design elements worth noting:
- The paint. The primary color is “Magna orange.” The color starts bright at the front of the vehicle then becomes darker as it moves toward the rear. There it is deep red. This is to indicate both the engine (i.e., red hot) as well as sound: The Doppler effect. That is, the sound is a higher pitch when the object—like a race car with a twin-turbo V8—approaches you and then becomes lower as it moves away. So brighter to darker, higher to lower.
- The use of Korean Hangeul lettering spelling “Magna” integrated into the design 마그마.
In both cases, it is indicative of the attention to detail that you can find in vehicles at your local Genesis dealership—vehicles that aren’t going to compete in any race series, but which do have the Two Line lighting.
shinymetalboxes 