SAFT is perhaps the most versatile, fundamentally, based engineering equation of state in use today. However, in common with all analytic equations of state, SAFT exhibits classical behavior in the critical region rather than the non-analytical, singular behavior seen in real fluids. Recently, so-called crossover equations of state have been developed which solve this shortcoming by incorporating the scaling laws valid asymptotically close to the critical point while reducing to the original classical equation of state far from the critical point. We have combined the SAFT-VR equation of state with an analytical crossover technique to obtain the SAFT-VRX equation of state. The SAFT-VRX approach combines the accurate low temperature behavior of SAFT-VR with a precise representation of the critical region. Preliminary results are presented for hydrocarbon systems which illustrate the accuracy of the SAFT-VRX approach over the entire fluid phase region. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.