New SUV includes electrified door handles and blinding strobe lights

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America’s road warriors can now go full military apocalypse, with the arrival of the Rezvani Vengeance.

While its competitors offer heated seats and optional roof-racks, this souped-up SUV boasts bulletproof glass, blinding strobe lights, electrified doorhandles, and wing mirrors that can shoot pepper spray – handy for putting those pesky cyclists in their place.

“Vengeance is yours,” trumpets the website, which details how the car can release a dense smoke screen to confuse people following you, as well as detect electromagnetic pulses from nuclear weapons. Always handy for the supermarket run.

Picking up the kids from school? You can announce your arrival through the car’s booming intercom system. Or why not just drive straight through the gates? The vehicle’s hefty steel ram bumpers and military-grade tyres would make mincemeat of any parking barrier – and dispatch the headteacher while they’re at it.

One thing oddly missing from the Vengeance (priced from $285,000, rising to $499,000 with all the extras) is a rear windscreen, because of course that would be unsafe. Instead, drivers are treated to a live video rear-view mirror and a front camera overlaid with “augmented reality”. Perhaps it shows an imaginary zombie army for you to mow down on your way to the mall.

Styled like an Elon Musk fever dream, its great bulk sculpted with clunking 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 himself for various health reasons, Rezvani Jr decided to start a car company to “create the same high-speed thrill of flying on the ground”. It seems he is keen to indulge in a bit of military cosplay too. The company’s first car design was named Beast, followed by one called Tank, of which the Vengeance is conceived as a more mainstream “little brother”.

Which brings us to the most frightening thing about this weaponised monster of an SUV: that it is aimed not at military personnel, but at everyday soccer moms. A viral TikTok video, made by family car reviewer @mobile_mama, shows a mom regaling her followers with the delights of the pepper spray mirrors – “my favourite” – while showing off the bulletproof vests, helmets and gas masks that come with the car. “Your kids will love that it was styled by a video-game designer,” she chirrups. “Is the Rezvani Vengeance the safest vehicle for you and your kiddos or what?” Just as long as you don’t accidentally pepper-spray them in the face.

This steroidal tank might seem like an anomalous extreme, but the truth is it represents the broader rise of the average US consumer vehicle into a supercharged killing machine. With its added tactical weaponry and paranoid styling, at least the Vengeance is honest about it.

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