When RMR collaborate on a project, they only know one way

It takes a particular sort of person to find the positives in a broken back. But then, Rhys Millen is a remarkably positive guy. Especially considering the cause of his injury a stunt gone wrong while back-flipping an off-road truck (yes, a truck) in preparation for 2007’s New Year’s Eve Red Bull Experiment could have killed him.

While most of us would be lying in bed feeling sorry for ourselves, the ex-pat Kiwi, 2005 Formula Drift Champion, Red Bull Drifting World Champion and multiple Pikes Peak International Hill Climb champion spent his time rather more productively. Well, as productively as is possible when surfing the net while lying flat on your back. He found a new car. “I had a lot of time to kill surfing around the net and came across the car, which at the time was a concept version,” he tells NZPC from his base in America.

The car in question is a Hyundai Genesis Coupe, which for those in the know will come as some surprise. Millen’s a GM man, surely? But anyone looking at the papers will know General Motors is in no position to be handing out sponsorship deals these days, even to guys with track records as impressive as Rhys’s. “We also had a little bit of insight into GM’s instability at that time, and had the foresight to explore other options on the chance that [GM] decided to pull out on us in the future,” Rhys says. “I sent out proposals to multiple manufacturers, with the biggest push to Hyundai, whose American HQ is five miles down the road from our Rhys Millen Racing [RMR] workshop.”

Knowing that the Korean auto manufacturer was looking to have a few modified Genesis Coupe concepts built for the SEMA Show, Rhys figured it was a good opportunity for RMR and Hyundai to establish a relationship and work together on something that would be truly special. “For me, the proposals that I put forward were attached to motorsport programmes. At that point there was no interest in motorsport from Hyundai, rather just in building a car for SEMA. In the back of my mind, though, I was hoping that if I did it right, it would be a basis to build momentum off. For every dollar they gave me for the project, I invested a dollar to make this car really wow people; and it was received at SEMA. After the build-up over the week, at the end of the show Hyundai did a recap and found they’d received a lot of media, most of which was around our RMR version of the car,” says Rhys.

Millen’s name may not be the first you’d place alongside the likes of Da Vinci, Picasso and Van Gogh, but it’s not as daft as it sounds. After all, in his own way Rhys is as much an artist as the dead guys who used to wield paintbrushes. “The art of speed taking a static piece of art and giving it life and movement,” is how Millen describes his latest work, the Genesis. “It’s exciting for me with my background in art to visualise a concept and apply it and see the end product.” And without a shadow of a doubt, the RMR Hyundai Genesis is one of the tidiest pieces of Japanese-themed kit we’ve seen in some while, even if it is from a manufacturer not normally responsible for producing good-looking canvasses.

So how did Millen and the RMR team come to this point with the look of the car? “I spent a day circling the car when we got it. We threw a couple of designs at it, and some of the key features were the headlights that really kicked it off. So we took those cues and ran with it to produce the final package,” Rhys tells us. “The car has some radical lines, leading off the front fenders through the doors and into the rear fenders.”

But what Rhys and the RMR team were piecing together wasn’t one hell of a replacement for his Pontiac Solstice drift car. They were building a car for time attack racing. “I was under contractual obligations to GM to run a drifting motorsport programme at the time,” Rhys explains. “I wanted to build a relationship with Hyundai, and I wanted to do something with this vehicle. If we did anything drift-related it would be a breach of my GM contract, so we decided to build a time attack car. But you know, throw the right tyres on it and you’ve pretty much got a drift car.”

While in some ways the Genesis has been a styling exercise, everything was done for a purpose. “With the thought of moving forward with a motorsport programme, the Genesis was designed with function in mind more than fashion,” Rhys says. “The entire wide bodykit was designed in such a manner that should you want to put wider wheels on it you could, yet it still did not take away from the original design of the car. We wanted to do something that gave us the track width to put in an extra-wide tyre front and rear, but something that was subtle, and captured the dips, folds and creases of the factory lines and enhanced them.”

Because the car was essentially designed around a look, the bulk of the work undertaken by RMR focuses on the body. Starting with a second Genesis Coupe, the team constructed body moulds in order to replicate nearly every panel in weight-reducing carbon fibre: hood, deck lid, roof, fenders, front fascia, side skirts, rear splitter and doors. So light are the doors that they have gone from weighing around 30.9kg from the factory to a meagre 3.9kg per door. Together with the rest of the carbon fibre panelling, the Genesis has shed in the vicinity of 386kg for competition use. “It weighed in at 2690lbs [1223kg].” Rhys tells us. “So, if you were to take it drifting, or complete its mission of time attack, you could easily get it down to 2500lbs [1136kg], which would make it 150lbs [68kg] lighter than the Solstice, so it would be more competitive than the Solstice.”

The exterior wasn’t the only part of the car to undergo a weight-loss programme. Internally, everything bar the factory dash was stripped out, and a comprehensive eight-point roll cage fitted to keep Rhys safe in the event of an accident. Meanwhile, a single Sparco driver’s bucket seat and matching five-point harness are essentially the only other things to reside within, bar an HKS gear knob, a carbon fibre steering wheel, a Racepak digital display and an adjustable sway bar lever. On the topic of footworks, this is an area of the Genesis that remains in relative factory tune. A set of KW adjustable coil-over struts with two-way adjustable damping technology rule the roost, and are complemented by adjustable chromoly sway bars and adjustable lower control arms to dial it all together.

With the announcement of the original Genesis came the revelation that it would be available with two engine options: a 2.0-litre four-cylinder turbo, and a 3.8-litre V6 naturally aspirated mill. RMR’s version arrived with the 2.0-litre installed. Without a number of test bed engines to practice on, it was decided that this particular one would remain in a sedate tune. To this effect, a Turbonetics turbocharger, external wastegate and blow-off valve were added to provide stronger horsepower and torque characteristics, while a custom RMR intake manifold has been added to improve flow. However, this is all set to change. “Right now, the car is scheduled to release in March with the V6 package. The car we built runs the 2.0-litre 4-cylinder turbo engine. But we have received from Hyundai recently the 3.8-litre V6 engine, and are in the process of building this up and turbocharging this engine to go into the Genesis.”

In our exclusive catch-up with Rhys, we quizzed the man about whether or not he had visions of sliding this car when he built it. His response was understandably cagey. “I can’t expose anything, but I would say since we’ve built this car, we may call it 'phase one’. The interest now in Hyundai to move forward with a motorsport programme has skipped phase two and has moved on to phase three. So we have a lot of momentum moving forward now with Hyundai.”

How much time attack racing the Genesis will see remains unknown, even to Rhys. “It’s a new adventure for us, to be honest. I have only done one event in the Sparco Evo a couple of years back, and never really paid attention to [time attack]. We’ve been with GM for the past five years and they didn’t have a product worthy of competing in them, and they didn’t allow the GTO at time attack events because it’s a pushrod engine hence me never paying attention to it.” However, with a man behind the scenes at Hyundai who has come from 10 years of Porsche marketing, it would appear there’s great interest in doing some road racing with the Genesis, be it time attack or circuit based.

So is Millen happy with the way the Genesis turned out? You bet. However, the pieces aren’t all in place just yet. “The car has really come out better than I thought it would. But the icing on the cake for me would be to see it in the drift colours.” With any luck, that’s where we’ll see this Genesis next. And with Millen and RMR’s dedication to build quality, and Rhys’s ability behind the wheel, we just might.

“Bridgestone and GM pulled out a few months ago, and I have just signed a two-year deal with Toyo Tires and another two-year deal with Red Bull, and we’ll be looking to make an announcement early in the year as to what we’ll be driving in 2009,” he says. Let’s hope it’s this.

2010 Hyundai Genesis Coupe – Specifications

Engine: Factory 2.0-litre inline four-cylinder DOHC 16V, Turbonetics turbocharger, Turbonetics external wastegate, Turbonetics blow-off valve, RMR intake manifold, AEM engine management system
Driveline: Factory 6-speed gearbox, LSD
Suspension/Brakes: KW adjustable coil-over suspension, adjustable chromoly sway bars, adjustable lower control arms, factory Brembo brake callipers, Brembo discs
Wheels/Tyres: Front — 18×9.5-inch SSR Type-F wheels, Bridgestone Potenza soft compound race slicks, Rear — 18×10.5-inch SSR Type-F wheels, Bridgestone Potenza soft compound race slicks
Exterior: Carbon fibre hood, deck lid, roof, doors, fenders, front fascia, side skirts, GT wing, rear splitter, canards, Lexan windows, custom Hyundai graphics
Interior: 8-point rollcage, Sparco ProADV bucket seat, Sparco 5-point harness, Racepak digital display, carbon fibre steering wheel, HKS shift knob, fire suppression system, custom switch panel
Performance: Untested

This article is from Performance Car issue 147. Click here to check it out.

Words: Gray Lynskey Photos: Alastair Ritchie