character of bass sub enclosures

I'm interested in chararctaristics of bass that cant be deasily described by dB or how "hard it hits", not that I don't wan a hard hitting sub&enclosure. I'll try my best to explain, and I hope someone with experience in this field can help. Most questions are clarified at the bottom.

I know that with Guitar amplifiers, the type of wood, or for tube amps, the tube choice, can affect the tone, can make a guitar sound brighter or darker, can give it a euro sound or more american. I want to know how this relates to car audio and more specifically, subwoofers and enclosures. I understand glass and mdf are the most common materials. So what of the other variables, shape, size, speaker choice itself, amp?

I'm looking for something that sounds dark, growls, reacts well to distortion, hard rock and funk.  What info is there from manufacturers that I can look at and know that is what I want? What kind of enclosure is more condusive to a string of 16th notes on the bass drum accompanied by distortion and funk-hard rock style bass...

small truck extended cab is the environment. -> I want to know if I can do this with a large but short box, (I will sacrafice for the sound if ideal design elements lend themselves to a taller box) which rasies other questions?

Is there a minimum air gap needed between the mag and the bottom of the box?

What affect on the sound do you get from pointing speakers up or down?

Are there other major elements of design of the enclosure that serve the sound I desire better than others?

I've heard curves don't affect the sound is that true for the additude of the sound?

Am I on crack, is the additude found mostly in higher frequencies?

I assume an amp that most cleanly transmits any sound will best transmit intended distortion. true?

What influence does porting have if any on our friend bass' personality?

Basically I guess I'm looking to find physical parameters or speaker/amp parameters that I can manipulate to tune my sound without or with minimal tuning on the EQ.

Basically, you're not going to get much enclosure effects in car audio.  The subwoofer is the only enclosure, normally, other than the car's body itself.  Sub freqs are low and don't tend to be colored by type of wood used in the box.  Porting a box will allow for more box sound than sealed, I think, but not to the extent that you are describing.

The problem with looking at the picture the way you are is this:  a guitar is a musical instrument and the body of the guitar is part of that.  Therefore the body is part of the sound production.  A speaker enclosure should work with the driver to reproduce the material accurately and shouldn't add anything to the sound.  They are two different things and are far apart.   I don't know enough about guitar amplifier enclosures to comment, but  if the guitar amp is specifically a part of the sound production, the coloration becomes part of the recorded sound.

Reproduction of that recorded sound should be true, with no added flavoring.  It sounds as if you want to manipulate the recorded sound in your playback environment.  How about just leaving that task to the engineers in the recording process.

I recommend you use a sealed enclosure and a good sub that performs well in such an enclosure.  Use a good set of components for your main soundstage, and use the best head unit you can afford.  Buy quality amplifiers and make sure the vehicle and wiring is up to the task of the additional power demand.  If you can reproduce a high quality sound source realistically in your vehicle environment you will have accomplished your goal.  You summed it up here, but it goes for all components of your system: