The Hamster Stunt sees a hamster take on the challenge of steering a 15-tonne truck up a Spanish quarry with the help of just a cage and a carrot – the carrot (and pedal work) provided by a person.

The stunt is the latest in Volvo’s range of adventure films that has made a virtue out of their image of reliability and strength. And it’s been quite a turn around, if The Hamster Stunt is anything to go by.

The whole idea is to show that even a hamster could manoeuvre something so big through a course that was so perilous using Volvo Dynamic Steering.

Just for comparison, the hamster is just 175 grams – you do the math!

And how much more fun is it to see a stunt hamster (called Charlie, by the way) take on the challenge in film, than just to be told ‘at low speeds, a heavily laden vehicle is so easy to manoeuvre that it can be steered with just one finger. When driving on the highway, this dynamic steering system offers unbeatable directional stability’.

The dramatisation of the technical innovations of Volvo Trucks is part of its live-test strategy, and #TheHamsterStunt was shot in a closed-off quarry at Los Tres Cunados, Spain, and was directed by Jamie Rafn, known for his one-take spot ‘Walk’.

And indeed #TheHamsterStunt went live one year after the launch of viral film ‘The Ballerina Stunt’, when slackliner Faith Dickey balances between two trucks driving on a motorway. And it then there’s the more recent #TheHook, when Claes Nilsson balances on the front panel of a Volvo truck as it dangles 20 meters above the ground.

“More films are on the way this autumn that show our trucks undergoing tests in conditions that are unusual, to say the least,” reveals Claes Nilsson, President of Volvo Trucks.

Our films reveal the technical innovations of our new truck models in a unique way. There will be more spectacular tests on film in the future.”

Watch the film to enjoy the hamster capers, and click through for more of the films and to follow Volvo’s Facebook for the other films that are on the way.