I definitely get your point with the classification thing, I remember reading about problems they were having at a recent car show because the show wanted everything categorized but the designers couldn't agree on what their cars were ie SUV, CUV, van, etc. For me its just a feel you get, so its pretty arbitrary. This design would probably be considered more of a CUV (my goal weight is south of 2000 lbs), but I can't bring myself to say that acronym out loud to people, so SUV works.
I think a lot of inspiration for this project came from the Revolution Hypercar SUV and how efficient their design was.
This project is very similar to the CarBEN project posted on this forum, but more budget minded. I have access to a real wind tunnel and lots of common sense shop guys who can help me figure out what steering and suspension to use.
I've heard a little bit about the future truck competition when I was involved with the EcoCar team here at NCSTATE, but I'll have to dig up some more info.