A hot new car and miles of open road are the perfect formula
for a weekend getaway just hours from home

Remember the days when taking a drive was just a fun thing to do? Before the coalescing dread of high gas prices, a crumbling infrastructure and the shame of an oversized carbon footprint, made going for a drive so tragically unhip?
Here’s a little secret. Driving is still fun. Don’t discuss it in proper company. And definitely don’t talk to your kids about it, because God knows you can’t trust anyone under 30 when it comes to indulging in personal weaknesses that could be bad for the planet!
Just for the sake of a great drive, we decided to wake up Rip Van Winkle’s Hudson Valley and tear up a new private country club race track, with a hot new sports car contender.
The new Hyundai Genesis Coupe, is the hot-blooded sporty little brother to the 2009 North American Car of the Year, the Genesis luxury sedan. Gone are the days when Hyundai was a polite name for a truly awful line of cars. The Alabama-based company made a big splash with the 2009 Super Bowl commercial about their Car of the Year win and have powered through the auto market slump with market share increases and respectable sales gains.
The Genesis series — which Hyundai sources describe as not just a model designation but a new vision for the company’s future — is well built, easy on the eyes, engineered for performance and safety, and best of all in these challenging times, a great dollar for dollar value against more prestigious European marques.
To road test a hot yellow Genesis Coupe 3.8L V6 Track model, a drive up the winding roads of the Hudson Valley, one of America’s most scenic landscapes on either side of the Hudson River, seemed just the ticket.
Westchester, NY, more like a mini metropolis, skyscrapers and all, than a sleepy country town, this is a great starting point for a weekend excursion.
To brace for a long day of road and track time, a pampered first night is recommended and there’s no better choice than the dazzling Ritz-Carlton in the heart of White Plains.
The rooms, from the modest $209 per night guest room, with a king-sized bed and city view, to the sumptuous one bedroom suite, with a king-sized bed, sofa bed and city view for $369 per night are elegant and modern. The Ritz Carlton also offers a choice of weekend room and dining packages from $229 to $349 per night.
All the rooms are exceptionally well-appointed with high thread count sheets, firm mattresses, flat screen TV and video, in-room Wi-Fi and best of all, a premium audio system wired throughout the rooms and suites with controls conveniently located (even in the expansive marble bath salon.)
No need to leave the hotel after checking in and freshening up. The on-premise restaurant, BLT Steak, offers delicious food in a clean, minimalist environ enhanced by the opulent Macasser ebony and suede dining room furniture.
Created by Chef Laurent Tourondel, BLT puts a lighter French Bistro touch on the traditional American Steakhouse, offering top quality USDA Prime and certified Black Angus in popular Filet, New York Strip, Rib-Eye, Porterhouse and Hanger steak cuts, as well as a full selection of Kobe Strip, Waygu Rib Eye, Top Cap and Skirt steaks. With wine, coffee and tip, diners can typically expect a $250 tab for two.
On Saturday morning get a jump on the day on the way out of the hotel with a cup of coffee and a bite at the ubiquitous round the corner Starbucks. A great people watching spot too!
The choice of routes north include the Taconic State Parkway and Route 9 on the east side and Route 9W and I-87, alternatively known as the New York State Thruway, on the west side.
Choosing the latter route, heading east a scoot across the Hudson River on Tappan Zee Bridge provides just the first in a series of eye-popping vistas of the wide majestic Hudson River and its steep wooded banks, with the occasional village, 19th century new world Rhine castles and late model McMansions hugging the shore.
Passing through Nyack, a cluster of state parks — Blauvelt, Nyack Beach and Rockland Lake — are just appetizers of the thickly forested mountainous terrain of upstate New York.
And it’s just the right time to start putting the Hyundai Genesis Coupe through its paces. Even with the scenic surroundings, 9W North is a briskly moving divided highway that begs to be driven with the kind of élan that could get you a $500 fine and points on you license.
The job for Hyundai has been to build not just a great car but a total brand credibility turnaround. The Genesis Coupe advances that objective significantly.
Unlike the sedate and largely vanilla aspect of the award winning Genesis sedan, the Coupe is muscular and rambunctious as it sits at the curbside.
Oddly, the distinct impression that the Genesis Coupe is an evolution in styling from the soon-to-be discontinued Hyundai Tiburon, is vociferously dismissed by Hyundai PR, design and engineering staffers.
Sure, it may share a common Korean design ethic but otherwise it’s a totally new generation vehicle. The Tiburon similarity wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there’s a clear distance between the $14K - $18K Tiburon runabout and this seriously charged up $30K Genesis Coupe.
Once behind the wheel, inside an almost cavernous cockpit, the excitement revs with the push button start of the engine, and that fat kick-in-the-pants rear-wheel drive format.
Gliding into traffic, a throaty sound blusters from the tailpipe- full, real, and powerful as you give it gas. And yet it could also have been sampled from the audio of any major motor sports event.
In fact, it’s a little of both. Clearly the track-tuned 306 horsepower V6, which propels this car with a clean, confident and steady thrust, is highly developed power plant. And yet, the sound or “note” of many cars — particularly a sporty coupe — is a precisely computer tuned selection of what the engineers and marketing guys want the car to hear. It is very much like tuning in a favorite station on the radio.
The Coupe sports Bridgestone Potenza RE050A tires, and Brembo brakes with 13.4-inch discs and those sassy four-piston red calipers peeking out from behind the 5-spoke 19-inch gunmetal-finish alloy wheels.
On the road the car follows through on look and sound with joyous performance and handling. The use of high-strength steel gives this car rigidity that rivals the
The most recent BMW M3. And while the ride is stiff and competitive, even this standout Coupe has not quite unraveled the BMW secret to the ultimate crisp driving dynamics.
The brisk tempo of the drive up 9W is interrupted only by the incredible views around the next bend. At one point, though a bit behind in our itinerary, there was no question but to pull over at the “scenic overlook” to gaze out at the ethereal expanse of tree covered mountains, valleys streams and lakes that spread out beneath the sun softening haze of the morning’s evaporating dew.
Our first stop mid-morning was in Newburgh, NY, a historic old city just 60 miles north of New York City. Though it’s  taken quite an economic pasting in the last half century, it retains many fascinating elements of each phase of its historic growth from an explorers’ outpost to a colonial port and industrial age manufacturing and transportation hub.
We stopped for lunch on Newburgh’s historic Hudson River waterfront. The views up and down the river, of sailboats and assorted little marinas, and the visual drama of the river valley, made the outdoor seating at the River Grill, the obvious choice. Iced teas, a fresh mozzarella and tomato salad, crispy calamari and shrimp stuffed with horseradish and wrapped with hickory smoked bacon were a few of the dishes we sampled to revive us before driving on.
A vist to the racetrack at the Monticello Motor Club was our next stop. We veered west from the Hudson River’s northward rise and headed for Monticello through Sullivan County.
The Monticello Motor Club is a private membership motor sports nirvana offering over four miles of expertly engineered track, with 22 hairy turns and a dozen different race configurations.
Co-founded by famed Formula 1 champion driver Brian Redman with an A-list group of charter members including comedian Jerry Seinfeld, film director and stock market magnate Jim Glickenhaus and NASCAR star Jeff Gordon, the track attracts driving enthusiasts – many making the 90 mile trek from NYC – to test their cars and their driving abilities in ideal racing conditions.
The Monticello Motor Club (MMC) offers memberships at a fee schedule not unlike a typical country club. And like most civil country clubs, if you call ahead with some credentials, proof of good standing at another club, or just a good story and a hot car, you can usually get some seat time under the watchful eye of the track marshalls.
The blazing yellow Hyundai Coupe, and a name-dropping exchange with one of the track managers got us in the gates and on the track.
And it was there on the wide turns and 1.5-mile straightaway that the Hyundai Coupe proved its mettle. The power churning from the V6 was relentless. The agile steering, stability and flat cornering of the suspension and rock-rigid steel structure made the car one of the most effortless track driving experiences ever.
It was as if the Genesis Coupe, like a thoroughbred horse, has an uncanny sense that it was created to perform under these high-speed conditions, ducking through turns like a downhill skier dodging slalom markers.
As often happens in private track sessions, the marshalls watch every car and driver looking for telltale signs of carelessness and hubris. Just when you’ve done your best lap times, recovered deftly from a spin-out, and emerged heroically from a mushroom cloud of dust from the tracks soft shoulder, you get the signal to come into the pits.
After cooling down over soft drinks in the MMC temporary clubhouse, a solid looking two-story structure that is more a high tech tent than a building, it was time to head back toward the Hudson Valley for an overnight stay and staging for the Sunday run back to Philadelphia.
In contrast to the opulence of the Ritz-Carlton, we landed for the second night at the homey and historic Alexander Hamilton House, perched on a cliff overlooking the river.
A bright and tidy room, full breakfast, swimming pool, exceptional private baths (some featuring original stained-glass windows and whirlpool tubs), free Wi-Fi, cable TV, and fresh baked cookies daily, the Alexander Hamilton House is a great deal for anywhere from $175 to $350 per night.
For a successful Sunday return drive, an early start, close attention to the GPS Navigator, a cooler bag with lunch, snacks and drinks, and the stealth positioning of a radar detector should get you back to Philly’s environs in about 3 to 4 hours. Not bad for a quick and decadent New England-style trip just a few hours drive.