An armored car for the scared rich people of the world
It's a perfect car for the people who panic when they see an unhoused person
Screenshot via Twitter
Gaze upon the pure encapsulated fear of the suburban military car. Every so often you scroll through Twitter and between depressing headlines and news updates you see something that just strikes a certain amount of dread. Even worse, it does so with a cheerful attitude. Thanks to Eoin Higgins for bringing this nightmare to my attention. Say hello to the Rezvani Vengeance.
Yes that is a modded Escalade turned into a wannabe MRAP for the American deeply afraid of everything around them. And yes that is someone wearing body armor gleefully talking about all of its features as if they’re necessities and not a defense contractor’s fever dream. The Vengeance is a perfect car for the person who says society is collapsing and crime is rampant because they saw a single tent on a sidewalk. The name isn’t helping its case either. The Tiktoker, mobile_mama, lays out some of the specs in her video for all of the “mamas” out there. Bulletproof glass and armor. Steel ram bumper. Constant recording. Blinding and strobe lights. The base asking price? $285,000. If you want all of those features, be ready to shell out another $125,000 for the “military package.”
And yes, that is the Segerstrom Center for the Arts behind the mobile_mama so this was filmed in Costa Mesa, California in Orange County. Yes, that Orange County. Clearly the type of place one needs strobe lights, smoke screens, pepper spray and most importantly undercarriage armor to protect against improvised explosive devices. Oh and she doesn’t bring it up, but the car also comes with gas masks. There’s no rear window though.
The mobile_mama Tiktoker’s account is focused on car reviews, not weird paranoid defense options, but using the same cheerful, excited tone for reviewing both a Honda CRV and an armored MRAP cosplay car is extremely unsettling. And this is not to single out this one person, other reviews or videos marketing the Vengeance are also pretty worrying. In fact, it looks like the Vengeance got its first press round in October, but this past week there’s been a range of influencer reviews, if recently uploaded Youtube and Tiktok pages are anything to go by. Since the car is essentially a modified Escalade, this isn’t something that will be on every car lot for sale.
Image via Rezvani
So why does this even exist? It’s unfortunately the latest example of the kind of fear and paranoia gripping well-off communities. It’s the kind of mindset that makes people think any person with less money than them is a threat, rather than someone who is struggling. In truth it’s not just because of money, but that have vs have not element has become a central part of this. It’s the “under constant threat” mindset that took over police, where training assumes everyone is a danger, where even kids are targets if one feels threatened. It’s an outgrowth of the Global War on Terror that came home, where Americans have to be on the offensive to prevent being victims. It’s also the latest in “tacticool” pseudo-military operator aesthetics, the Hummer obsession taken to its near-endpoint (that endpoint, presumably, would be if they mounted machine guns on these cars). And there’s also an element of awareness that the people this is marketed for (again, the price tag is not cheap) realize they’re actively punishing underprivileged people and so they need to protect themselves against reprisal.
For other examples, consider the St. Louis Gun Couple that threatened St. Louis-area protesters with a pistol and assault rifle when they simply walked along a public sidewalk outside their house. That led to Mark McCloskey running for office, including going to a rally where he and his wife recreated the infamous photos on stage, outfits and all. Or think of Citizen, the app formerly called Vigilante (because subtlety isn’t really the point here). Alongside playing home to unconfirmed reports of crimes — often tinged with racism and classism — the app has been testing out private security for its users. In 2021 the CEO put up a bounty for a man wrongly suspected of starting a fire, sending an innocent person’s name and image to thousands of users. Think about the implications if armed or aggressive private security was sent out to harass or go after people without cause. This is one of the manifestations of that fear that we actually are aware of. This is something widely marketed. It’s almost a guarantee there are more nefarious private security or surveillance apparatuses available for the rich that the wider public simply doesn’t know about.
It’s not too big of a stretch to imagine. People are being cruel toward unhoused people. Take for instance the recent case in San Francisco where Collier Gwin turned a hose on an unhoused woman. These kinds of tactics have been used for years, but some instances have been noticeably brazen. Here’s one from Jan. 19 where a man named Matt Wilson records himself going to a sidewalk encampment and attacking and damaging someone’s belongings and home.
The claim is that newly elected Mayor Karen Bass won’t “do anything” about homelessness, which in this person’s eyes appears to be doing violence toward people’s lives. Aside from the fact that his act of destruction causes a mess and he’s doing a crime on camera (and showed up with mace as if expecting to be attacked), he’s acting as if this is the only appropriate response to a crisis rather than anything humanitarian.
If everything different is viewed as a threat, then the only response is to turn oneself into a living fortress America. And that view point only leads to lashing out, preemptive strikes built out of fear. And the only result is that people who are suffering suffer more.
Which is why the Rezvani Vengeance is so unsettling. The Vengeance isn’t likely to take over the streets. It doesn’t quite have the mainstream attention it would need — and besides the already giant trucks and SUVs that tower over pedestrians are catering to this crowd already — and the price point won’t help widespread adoption. But it exists, and some people are going to get it. They likely won’t be using it to fend off attackers, survive IEDs or evade pursuers with smoke screens. Rich suburbanites are not James Bond in a gadget-filled Aston Martin. The sheer size and mass of the car is a greater danger to the people around it who are not using cars.
More than likely this is going to be used for the most mundane of purposes. And that’s why I keep coming back to the mobile_mama Tiktok specifically. The video is in Southern California, home of traffic jams and road rage. Some poor fool could cut the Vengeance driver off and end up being chased by an armed and armored vehicle — it has a steel ram bumper, remember. Or worse, some angry and bigoted driver could turn its features against those who can’t defend itself; someone could pepper spray an unhoused person, disturb an encampment with smoke or strobe lights. What’s more likely, the recording feature will be used to gather evidence of a coordinated insurgent attack on the car, or an angry driver will document themselves harassing unhoused people like Wilson did? Most people aren’t operating with some grand scheme, but they can be confrontational and the more dangerous tools at their disposal, the worse the outcome.
But hey, a stroller fits in the trunk. That’s the real selling point for this car.
The second I saw the 1st photo, I thought, "omg!! That's Segerstrom Hall!!"
Across the street is South Coast Plaza, where one of the chase scenes from Mac & Me was filmed lmao