Jacky Ickx is a living legend of motorsports. The Belgian-born driver is probably best known for his heroics in Formula 1 and LeMans, but he also had some spectacular performances at the Dakar Rally among other races. He turned 80 this month and is still globetrotting—I spotted him cruising through a Dakar bivouac this very week in a Genesis GV80 with some cool off-road modifications. I got a closer look at the thing and man, I can’t believe how good this vehicle looked.
I got shuttled out to Saudi Arabia for a few days of this year’s Dakar Rally by the race’s official timing sponsor, Tudor Watches. I grabbed almost 1,000 photographs and talked to many people on site; I’ll have an enlightening story about how a huge team executes the expansive race for you soon.
But first, let’s talk about this GV80 I spotted at Ha’il, a stop about halfway through the two-week 2025 Dakar Rally. I caught the car moving slowly through a crowd with an older gentleman behind the wheel and remembered this Instagram post from Genesis: “Meet the GV80 Desert edition for Jacky Ickx where performance meets luxury. This is a concept masterpiece to honour our Brand Partner and racing legend @jackyickxofficial.” It had to be him!
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get close to the man himself. But I did manage to find the GV80 and grabbed a handful of photos for us. I remember being mostly unimpressed when a few studio shots of it were getting passed around a couple of weeks back. But seeing it in the Saudi sand made it look much more intriguing.
If this is indeed a preview of future aftermarket parts for this vehicle, I think W Motors could be on to something—we’ll get back to them in a minute.
The fender flares let the car pull off a pretty aggressive fitment on the Braid rally wheels, which must be pretty low offset to stand so proud. The roof rack looks clean enough but what caught my attention were the fitted housings for auxiliary lights and recovery points up front. It’s amazing how much a little shaped plastic framing can make off-road accessories look classy.
You may notice the small “Performance By W Motors” decal on the back. W Motors is an ambitious boutique outfit responsible for a few extreme car concepts including the Lykan Hypersport, which you might remember from that one Fast and Furious scene.
An official partnership between Genesis and W Motors was announced back in July. At that time, W Motors Founder and CEO Ralph Debbas said: “… This agreement with Genesis allows us to leverage our expertise in high-performance and luxury automotive design to create unique, special edition cars that will offer Genesis customers unprecedented levels of personalization and exclusivity, adding to the diverse and extraordinary personalization options Genesis owners are accustomed to.”
So I guess this “Desert Edition” GV80 is one result of the Genesis x W Motors collab. I haven’t been able to find anything like a proper spec sheet and it appears to be a one-off, but if we’re ultimately able to buy these fog light bezels, wheels, and fenders for GV80s soon I’d be stoked.
No official parts, prices, or availability has been announced but based on that context above, I’d say there’s a good bet that this is a test bed for some accessories that might indeed be available soon.
This car would not be up for the challenge of racing the Dakar, but it’d be perfect for chasing. Following the race involves many hours of highway driving followed by, usually, a few miles of mild-to-soft sand. So a setup like this, a luxury SUV with aggressive tires, would do just fine.
I couldn’t tell if anything significant had been done to the car’s suspension or powerplant. These things can move pretty well out of the box, especially with the optional 3.5-liter twin-turbo V6 engine, but I’m sure some more HP could be coaxed out with custom tuning for performance.
If you run into Ickxs in the coming days and weeks, ask him what he thinks of it for me, will ya? He’s not racing in this year’s Dakar Rally, but some of his old cars are. Sort of. This Mercedes G-Wagen is a “nut and bolt perfect Jacky Ickx replica” that was made in ’07 by German G enthusiast Jörg Sand, who’s now racing the thing (how cool is that?) with navigator Patrick Diemer.
Another Ickx-style legacy car in the mix at this year’s Dakar is Nantes Prestige Autos’ Porsche 959, being driven by Juan Morera and Lidia Ruba from Spain. I’m not positive if that’s also a replica or a car that did indeed race in the past, and I didn’t see it myself but Dakar Rally organizers ASO have posted some great photos of it in action this year.
Got any more ideas for cool GV80 mods? Hit up the author at andrew.collins@thedrive.com.