In southern California, the war in parking lots has become real. Not content with their oversized trucks and child-killing SUVs, America’s road warriors can now experience a full-blown military apocalypse, with the arrival of the Rezvani Vengeance.
While its competitors offer heated seats and optional roof racks, this upgraded SUV features bulletproof glass, blinding strobe lights, electrified door handles, and rearview mirrors that can shoot pepper spray, which is handy for putting those pesky cyclists instead.
“Vengeance is yours,” the website proclaims, detailing how the car can release a dense smoke screen to confuse people following it, as well as detect electromagnetic pulses from nuclear weapons. Always at hand for the operation of the supermarket.
Pick up the kids from school? You can announce your arrival through the car’s booming intercom system. Or why not drive straight through the gates? The vehicle’s strong steel bumpers and military-grade tires would make mincemeat of any parking barrier, and dispatch the warden while they’re at it.
One thing the Vengeance (priced at $285,000, rising to $499,000 with all the extras) is strangely missing is a rear windshield, because of course that wouldn’t be safe. Instead, drivers enjoy a live video rear view mirror and an “augmented reality” overlay front camera. Maybe it shows an imaginary zombie army for you to crush on your way to the mall.
Styled like an Elon Musk fever dream, its massive volume sculpted with loud facets, the Vengeance is the latest heady concoction to emerge from Irvine, California-based Rezvani Motors. the company was founded in 2014 by Ferris Rezvani, whose father was an F4 Phantom fighter pilot in the Iranian air force. Unable to become a pilot for various health reasons, Rezvani Jr decided to start a car company to “create the same thrill of high-speed flying on land.” He looks like he’s also willing to indulge in some military cosplay. The company’s first car design was called the Beast, followed by one called the Tank, of which the Vengeance is envisioned as a more conventional “little brother”.
Which brings us to the scariest thing about this armored monster of an SUV: that it’s not aimed at military personnel, but at everyday moms. A viral TikTok video, made by family car reviewer @mobile_mama, shows a mom regaling her followers with the delights of pepper-sprayed mirrors – “my favourite” – while donning the bulletproof vests, helmets and gas masks that come with the car. “Your kids will love that it was designed by a video game designer,” she says with a chirp. “Is the Rezvani Vengeance the safest vehicle for you and your children or what?” As long as you don’t accidentally pepper spray them in the face.
This tank of steroids may seem like an anomalous extreme, but the truth is that it represents the broadest ascent from the average American consumer vehicle to a supercharged killing machine. With its added tactical weaponry and paranoid styling, at least the Vengeance is honest about it.
According to the Insurance Institute for Road Safety, drivers behind the wheel of an SUV are two to three times more likely to kill a pedestrian in a collision than when driving a normal car. A study in michigan found that, at 20-39 mph, 30% of SUV crashes resulted in a pedestrian fatality, compared to 23% of car crashes. Whereas, at 40 mph or higher, 100% of SUV crashes resulted in the fatality of a pedestrian, compared to 54% of car crashes.
It all comes down to simple physics: SUVs are deadlier due to their enormous weight, much taller front ends, and worse visibility. Whereas a normal car typically hits a pedestrian’s legs and throws them against the hood, an SUV hits the upper torso or head and then crushes them under the wheels.
Following Americans’ penchant for enlarging everything from Big Macs to McMansions, it’s no surprise that the sale of increasingly larger and heavier cars has skyrocketed. Some reports show that 80% of all car sales in the US are now SUVs or trucks. When I visited Ford’s Detroit factory in 2019, I was proudly told that the company had stopped making compact cars entirely in the US.
It is no coincidence that the increase in SUV sales is accompanied by an alarming increase in the number of pedestrians killed on the roads. according to a Road Safety Governors Association report, pedestrian fatalities have skyrocketed 54% over the past decade. Cars may have gotten safer for the people inside them, but not for pedestrians, bicyclists, or cyclists. This, as the New York Times put it, a uniquely American problem. While other comparable developed countries have seen traffic deaths fall in recent years, the US is the only one that has seen an increase, even during the pandemic.
SUVs are killing us in other ways too, as some of the world’s worst polluters. They were recently found to be the second largest cause of the global increase in carbon dioxide emissions over the past decade, eclipsing all shipping, aviation, heavy industry, and even trucking. If all SUV drivers came together to form their own country, the Republic of Vengeance? – would rank as the seventh largest emitter in the world.
Still, bundled up inside their bulletproof vests, protected by glaring lights and thick smokescreens, with their gas masks at the ready, at least the kids will be safe on their way home from school.
