If Harley-Davidson is Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” then Confederate is Social Distortion’s take on that song. All sharpened edges, glistening in the light.

Just look at the Hellcat’s license-plate bracket. Where other motorcycle manufacturers make do with a cheap piece of stamped sheet metal or injection-molded plastic to secure the license plate, the Hellcat’s license plate mounts to a military-specification-looking piece of science-fiction fetishist’s fantasy.

So much is perfectly executed on the Hellcat that it leaves the customizer at a loss for ways to personalize or improve it. The LED headlight assembly’s die-cast aluminum base could be polished. And, um, that’s about it.

Confederate motorcycles are all new, but the company shares an ethos of hand-crafting machinery from the finest available components with automotive companies such as ICON and Singer Vehicle Design, companies which build classic vehicles into new machines that look like old ones. ICON works with first-generation Ford Broncos and Toyota Land Cruisers, while Singer specializes in Porsche 911s.

Both of those companies celebrate the design genius of their chosen canvases, but Confederate creates its own, from scratch.

Confederate’s name causes no small amount of befuddlement, which increases in proportion to distance from Birmingham. Chambers says the name is a tribute to the company’s Southern roots as well as to the design lines of the former Confederate Air Force vintage warplane collection in Texas. That group changed its name to the Commemorative Air Force to avoid unintended implications.

But Chambers’ romantic notions of lower-case “rebel theory” by Albert Camus also contributed to the company’s name. He is excited by discussion of Pennsylvania’s 18th-century Whiskey Rebellion. What name could be more rebellious for a fan of pushing back against The Man?

Confederate’s bikes are powered by big, loud V-twin engines, just like Harley-Davidson’s motorcycles. The engines are built by S&S Cycle, a company that specializes in making Harley-like engines and parts. S&S engines propelled thousands of Harley “clones” that were built in the ’90s up until The Motor Company (as Harley is known to bikers) boosted production to meet demand.

The swell of middle-aged demand that resulted in the derisive term “investment biker” was sparked by the 1969 release of the film “Easy Rider,” Chambers believes. That movie made a deep impression on his generation, so when his cohort realized 20 years later that they’d made enough money to buy toys, that’s what they started doing, en masse.