Harley-Davidson Dark Force Has Wheels Almost as Expensive as a 2023 Dodge Charger

It may not seem like it, but the bike you can admire in the attached gallery was once a stock Harley-Davidson Fat Boy. In its most recent incarnation, it sells off the bike maker’s shelves for $20,199. In this heavily modified form, just the extra parts added amount to twice that much. And that is not something we get to see very often, not even in this crazy world of modified Harleys.

The bike, named post-conversion Dark Force, is the work of a major German crew that goes by the name Thunderbike. It was made as part of the shop’s Fat Boy collection, becoming the “new spearhead” of that group of motorcycles. And it’s easy to see why.

Look all you want and you’ll see very few traces of the old Fat Boy left. Sure, the shape is roughly the same, the headlight comes as an evolution of the original one, and the engine was left unchanged, but those are about the only common traits you can find.

You know the Dark Force is something special as soon as your eyes fall on the thing’s wheels. It’s common for shops to go after these parts first when modifying a Harley, but this time Thunderbike seems to have gone overboard.

Made in-house, the custom wheels are much larger than stock, but also larger than what we usually get in aftermarket form as well: the front one is sized at 23 inches, while the rear one comes in at 21.

They’re both monoblocks and part of Thunderbike’s Grand Prix series. But what amazes the most is how much they cost. The front one is listed at 8,710 euros (about $9,250), and the one at the back sells for 16,154 euros ($17,160 at the time of writing). That’s a grand total of $26,410 for the pair, which for comparison's sake is just $4k short of the selling price of said Dodge Charger.

But the wheels are not the only modifications made to the Fat Boy. A total of 30 custom parts are listed by Thunderbike as having gone into this thing, including a single-sided swingarm milled from solid aluminum ($5,560 for that one) and air ride system ($1,600) that can adjust ride height by as much as 10 cm (4 inches), and modified front and rear fenders, just to name a few.

All these 30 parts cost a grand total of 38,592 euros, translated into $41,000 in American currency. That amount does not include the base motorcycle, man hours, paint job, and, of course, the modified exhaust system, which would definitely bring the total cost to over $60k.

The Harley-Davidson Dark Force is thus, without a doubt, one of the most expensive custom rides we’ve ever come across in Thunderbike’s portfolio, and most certainly one of the most expensive Fat Boys out there. Is it worth it? Probably each of us should be the judge of that.