Are Hyundai completey monkey nuts? There was plenty of monkeying around when Hyundai Motor UK set its new small car the ultimate wear and tear challenge recently.
In the first endurance test of its kind in the UK by a car manufacturer, cheeky safari park baboons were let loose on Hyundai’s New Generation i30 hatchback.
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 high quality steel which is produced using steel from Hyundai’s own steel works.
Baboons from Knowsley Safari Park on the outskirts of Liverpool were chosen for their well-known love of tearing park visitors’ cars apart – most famously for Manchester United and England striker Wayne Rooney,’s vehicle when he visited the Merseyside attraction last year.
And it was monkey business as usual when Hyundai Motor UK parked one of its New Generation i30s in the baboon enclosure, as it was immediately besieged by dozens of the park’s primates. 10 hours later the car emerged virtually unscathed.
The monkeys simulated the punishment a typical family might subject a car to: jumping up and down on seats, pushing and prodding buttons and opening and closing storage bins. They even checked the durability of cupholders with plastic drinking beakers!
Outside, the paintwork was smeared and scraped, but the hard-wearing paint protected the car from significant scratches and chips.
Meanwhile, other baboons tested the fabric of seats by eating their lunch in the car and some played with their toys in the i30’s sizeable boot.
To give something back to monkeys for their help, Hyundai Motor UK 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.
“For a baboon, to have a car to play with for a whole day is manna from heaven!” says David Ross, General Manager at Knowsley Safari Park. “I’ve seen thousands of cars pass through this enclosure, get mobbed by monkeys, and none have lasted the distance as well as this Hyundai. These baboons are incredibly inquisitive. If you put them on any car they will scour it for the weak points and find any faults. At one point there were 40 monkeys in the car, pushing it to its limits – that’s ten times the size of the average human family!”
The New Generation i30 will go on sale in Australia at the beginning of June.