We put eight different dogs in almost a dozen cars this year. As ever, the “Will It Dog” reviews are about helping you understand the canine compatibility of different vehicles rather than insisting pet owners drive any specific car. However, some are certainly better than others, and the 2024 Genesis GV80 proved to be exceptionally dog-friendly in several key ways.
Last year I called out the Volvo V60 Cross Country as the Top Dog Car. Funny enough, I had a very similar arc of appreciation with this Genesis. When I first got into it and drove around, I thought it was catatonically boring. But it didn’t take long for me to remember that, actually, soft and cushy cars are great when you just want to move a family around.
More specifically, when it comes to dog-hauling, the GV80 seemed to have all the advantages of an SUV without the downsides I sometimes encounter with taller machines. I’ll bullet out what I liked the most and why I’m crowning this vehicle as The Drive‘s Top Dog Car of 2024.
- Easy to get in and out. The door sills and rear seats are lower than you might expect on a vehicle this size. That means you don’t have an abundance of ground clearance for off-roading, sure, but who cares? Nobody’s wheeling a GV80 anyway. The practical benefits are huge, though, and our animals had no problem hup’ing onto the back seat or rear cargo area.
- Abundant rear seat and cargo room. While the door sills are low, the rear ceiling is high. Only the absolute largest animals would have headroom issues—even a cane corso could sit up back there.
- Good animal containment. There’s a pretty good gap between the front and rear seats, and the rear seatback is pretty high. That means you can keep dogs sequestered to the second row or cargo area relatively easily.
- Smooth ride. Dogs don’t like getting tossed around and they won’t in this vehicle. Its soft suspension soaks up a lot of road imperfections that could rattle and roll your passengers, even when you hit the throttle for a hard merge. The GV80 is not particularly slow, but its generally demure aura does not inspire hard driving, which your dogs will also appreciate.
- Good snout access to the rear window. The distance from the seat to the bottom of the rear window will be good for a big range of dogs to get their noses into the wind. I only recommend letting your pet do this at low speeds—bugs or pebbles can hit pretty hard above about 40 mph.
- Retractable rear window shades. It’s great to be able to get some sun-blockage; dogs can’t take their fur coats off!
- Easy-drop rear seats. You can drop the back seats from behind the car with a power switch in the back of the cargo area, which is nice if you need to do some interior rearrangement with a leash in your hands.
- Arctic rear air conditioning. We’ll be spending more time considering and critiquing rear climate controls in 2025, partially inspired by how impressed I was with the GV80’s rear cooling capabilities. The main driver controls make it easy to adjust the front and rear climates independently, and if desired, the rear vents can blow very cold and strong wind onto your rear passengers. We had an extremely hot week during a hot summer while road testing this car, and our cold-loving dog Bramble stopped panting within seconds of being loaded up from a walk.
- Kennel carrying. Keeping your dog in a kennel is probably the safest way to move them around in your car, and the GV80 has plenty of room to haul a decent-sized one.
Ultimately, the only thing I really didn’t like about this vehicle is that our test car rang up at over $80,000 and guzzled fuel. And while you can pick a version with fewer options for closer to $60,000, 19 mpg in combined driving is brutal. Still, as far as my creature’s comfort in our week-long test, the GV80 was the pack’s favorite.
