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Just say, "Yes, Sir!" Meet the Genesis XXX, World's largest production SUV

AutoWeek
By WILLIAM JEANES

JUST WHEN ARIANNA Huffington thought it was safe to go out, here comes a long, tall Texan with an SUV the size of Delaware. It’s called the Genesis XXX, and it will drive the Sierra Club to the Jim Jones Tropical Party Drinks recipe book. Working from a hangar-size steel building in Dallas, entrepreneur George Hull, who owns a chain of Texas gravel pits, has created the biggest SUV most of us will ever see.

“I just got sick and tired of all the bitching about big sport/utes,” Hull says. “All that foolishness about ‘What would Jesus drive?’ finally pushed me over the edge.” The basis for Hull’s choice of the Genesis name, we should point out, predates Christ’s opportunity to choose a vehicle of any kind. It derives from the Old Testament biblical verse “There were giants in the earth in those days” (Genesis 6:4). In this instance, the giant is not in the earth but on Interstate 10 and filling up your rearview mirror. It is closer than it may appear; Hull intends to begin building two Genesis XXXs per month, beginning in time, he says, “for the Christmas buying season.

“I was first going to call it Bigfoot,” Hull said, “but some stadium racer or somebody had that one copyrighted, if you can believe that.” Hull’s chief engineer Stub Newell told us that Sasquatch, Leviathan and Titanic were among Hull’s early choices for a name.

Titanic? Newell’s eye-twinkling reply was, “That thing killed 1500 people, and we couldn’t begin to top that kind of a reputation.” So Genesis XXX it is. The triple-X, just so you know, is there to remind the six-foot-four Hull of his football days at Texas A&M.

“I played tackle, so I’m the middle X,” Hull explained. “The one on the left is for my good buddy, Bobby Lee, who played guard. The other X is for Joe Don Looney.” Reminded that Joe Don Looney was a University of Oklahoma running back and not an Aggie lineman, Hull laughed uproariously.

“I know that. I never even met Joe Don Looney. But just tell me that Joe Don Looney ain’t the greatest name in football history.” The 250-pound Hull laughed so hard that tears coursed down his leathery cheeks. And we had to admit he had us there.

The Genesis XXX, or G3X, is built on a Ford truck chassis. Not the kind of Ford truck chassis you’re used to driving, but one you’ve certainly seen here and there. The one that underpins midsize trash haulers and dump trucks: the Ford F-550. And not just the plain F-550 but the 188.8-inch-wheelbase F-550 dually.

Power to drive all six wheels comes thundering forth from a special version of the 6.0-liter Power Stroke V8 turbodiesel. Normal horsepower for this 32-valve engine is 325 at only 3300 rpm, and normal torque is a whopping 560 lb-ft at a languid 2000 rpm. By dint of a reconfigured fuel-injection system and an old standby—porting and polishing the cylinder heads—the power/torque component is raised to 355/570.

Ford has a more modern engine than the Power Stroke V8, the Triton sohc V10, which delivers 310 hp. Asked about the choice of the V8, Newell said, “Didn’t want no V10. That Chrysler Viper’s got a V10, and you know what the bible says about serpents and vipers and stuff like that.”

EPA city/highway fuel economy numbers are not yet available, but an optimistic Newell expressed confidence the mpg number for highway driving “would at least reach the low two figures.”

The bodywork prototype, by Emmons & Nichols of Binghampton, New York, is not yet completed, though the design has been agreed upon—which allows us to bring you this computer-generated photograph, opposite page. Hull asked E&N co-owner Gideon Emmons for, in Emmons’ words, “a body that would seat 10 and offend thousands.”

The rear portion of the body structure is mated to the two-door version of the truck chassis cab. The overall effect is not as different from a conventional bobtail van as we’d like to see, but using the two-door cabs allows for the three doors on each side of the rear section to match. We think this is a better aesthetic solution than having two matching side doors on the cab and another two on the rear compartment.

After brief experimentation with steel and aluminum, E&N decided on a fiberglass shell reinforced with carbon fiber crossmembers and reinforcing panels. “We figure to be a second or third vehicle for families that own Corvettes, and we thought the fiberglass would be comforting to them,” said Hull, who functions as his firm’s mar- keting manager as well as CEO.

The rear passenger section will have one benchseat, located at the front, and six captain’s chairs arranged in what amounts to an elongated rectangle in the rear area. There will be the conventional Ford front and side airbags in the cab section, but the rear will have none, only four-point seatbelts. “I’m not sure we even need those,” said Newell, “the people back there will be sitting well above most wrecks the vehicle’s involved in.”

Price for this behemoth is pending. In further conversation about what will be the largest SUV in a country filled with big SUVs, Hull estimated that a G3X, which is the only variant, would cost “somewhere between an arm and a leg and the earth.” We estimate the price at $250,000, exclusive of title, tag and insurance—based on an upside-down reading of Hull’s Out Tray.

One last thing. In the spirit of Henry Ford, the man who put America on wheels by making cars affordable, the Genesis XXX will be available in a choice of color: black. “You know,” says Hull, “like Darth Vader, the meanest sumbitch in the Empire.”

2004 GENESIS XXX
ON SALE: November
BASE PRICE: $250,000 (est.)
POWERTRAIN: 6.0-liter, 355-hp, 570-lb-ft V8; 4wd, three-speed automatic
CURB WEIGHT: 8150 pounds
0-60 MPH: 7.5 seconds (mfr.)

(Photo)Stub Newell, chief engineer on the Genesis XXX, with gravel magnate George Hull's prototype. Which is anything but the pits.

Attached Images

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Stacy94PGT
My first car was a 67 Mustang Coupe, 2nd one was a 67 Cougar XR-7, 3rd one was a 66 Mustang Coupe. Why did I get rid of these cars for ? I know why, because I'm stupid, stupid, stupid.

My next Ford.....