As world travelers, our stomachs have suffered from Montezuma’s revenge, but we’ve never experienced anything like what Harley-Davidson fans’ eyes had to endure at last week’s 25th annual European H.O.G. Rally: Hell’s Revenge.
Hell’s Revenge is a one-off special concept based on the Jeep Renegade built by Garage Italia Customs with the help of Jeep and Harley-Davidson. Unveiled at the rally in Portoroz, Slovenia, it solves one of the biggest gripes we’ve harbored, secretly, about the little Italian-made Jeep ever since we first laid eyes on its upright body panels: It didn’t look like it was on fire. Okay, maybe we weren’t complaining about that, but if you’re going to slap Harley badges the size of serving platters on the doors of a Renegade, you might as well give it a flame job patterned after those found on many motorcycle tanks.
Garage Italia Customs didn’t just apply a coat of fluorescent flames to the little Jeep’s front-end and call it a day. The European design firm also lifted the suspension, installed its own “personalized” front skid plate in place of the original, fitted it with distinct wheels wrapped in chunky BF Goodrich tires, and installed two LED spotlights mounted ahead of its windshield. Inside, a flame-painted dash plus leather-and-black-denim seat upholstery completes the outlaw rider theme of Hell’s Revenge.
Sadly, no work was done under Hell’s Revenge’s flame-covered hood. A dead-stock (for Europe) 2.0-liter turbodiesel engine makes 170 horsepower and close to 260 lb-ft of torque while a 9-speed automatic transmission does the shifting—truly, hell’s revenge to manual transmission-loving Europeans.
It seems that Hell’s Revenge remains muffled by its stock exhaust system, a pity for those European H.O.G. Rally riders who’ve spent the last quarter-century collectively annoying neighbors and strangers with their bikes’ noisy exhausts. It’s a lifestyle thing.
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