Not sure how drunk Hyundai boss was when he greenlighted this, but they took a new Hyundai i30 to the Knowsley Safari Park and let loose a group of baboons on it. The purpose of the test was to see how tough the car really is, and apparently it passed with flying colors. If you think about it, this test make sense because children do tend to act like baboons during car journeys! That is what Hyundai is basically saying here.

Hyundai phrases this more politely: ” The car has been specially-designed for families and their ‘little monkeys’ in the back, with extra strong materials used to build the interior, easy wipe plastics, tough fittings and a special high quality steel used for the bodywork.“

The test has been very thorough as it turned out, with some baboons taking care of the interior by eating their lunch off the fabric seats, jumping up and down, and wrestling with the plastic trims, while another group treated the exterior by jumping on the roof, hanging from the mirrors and scraping the paint.

Knowsley Safari Park monkeys are known for their love of tearing cars apart, if they don’t like the look of you! For example they ruined Wayne Rooney’s car when he visited the park, and who can blame them. You may remember Top Gear did a similar experiment with their home-made convertible, but they were okay, probably because monkeys like them.

To give something back to monkeys for their help, Hyundai has donated £1,000 to one of Knowsley’s supported charities, the Primate Society of Great Britain, which dedicates its work to conservation and captive care of new and old world monkeys, gibbons and apes.