Hyundai I30 Survives Baboon Encounter 'Unscathed' – Video

Hyundai recently put its i30 hatchback through an unusual challenge by letting a group of safari park baboons notorious for monkeying with parked cars loose on it.

Over 40 monkeys put the i30’s parts and interior to an excessive wear and tear test and is the first test of its kind in the UK by an automaker. Really? You don’t say.

Apparently these baboons from Knowsley Safari Park are famous for tearing up park visitors’ cars apart, most notably Wayne Rooney’s car when he visited the attraction last year. The baboons did everything a mischievous child would: jump up and down the seats, pushing and poking buttons, opening and closing storage bins. 10 hours later, the Hyundai i30 emerged ‘virtually unscathed’ according to the Korean automaker.

On the outside, the paintwork was smeared and scraped but had no significant scratches or chips. Even stranger is that Hyundai hopes lessons learned from monkey testing can be applied to the research and development of future cars.

“At Hyundai we believe in new thinking, which is why we decided to take a new approach with this durability test. You have to be pretty brave to subject a car to the most rigorous quality testers in the world, and the monkeys certainly gave our new generation i30 a thorough examination. The fact that it survived with only a few scrapes is testament to the way a modern Hyundai is designed and engineered. We really do give a monkey’s about building tough cars,” said Felicity Wood, i30 product manager at Hyundai.

To pay for the monkeys’ hard day at work, Hyundai donated a tad over $1,600 (£1,000) to the Primate Society of Great Britain.