Hyundai Motor Co. saw its foray into the luxury market rewarded Jan. 11 when its Genesis sedan received the South Korean automaker's first North American Car of the Year award.

The Genesis narrowly beat out the Ford Flex, a seven-passenger crossover vehicle, for the honor, presented on the first day of media previews for the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

Hyundai launched the rear-wheel-drive Genesis a year ago, a car it saw as its ticket into the ranks of the world's top-end automakers. The company bills it as a competitor to luxury models such as the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, BMW AG's 5-Series and Toyota Motor Corp.'s Lexus GS.

"Genesis … really does make a new beginning for our company," Hyun-Soon Lee, Hyundai's president of research and product development, told reporters in accepting the award. "It represents the engineering excellence that our company has tried for and it is a game-changing vehicle that will define our product going forward."