SUV parked on house roof goes viral — carmaker's boss reacts

How do you keep your new SUV safe when nobody is around to drive it?

One family in India came up with an extraordinary answer: put it on the roof.

A video showing a Mahindra Scorpio Classic being lifted by a crane and placed on top of a two-storey house in Bihar has gone viral, eventually catching the attention of the chairman of the company that made the vehicle.

Anand Mahindra described the unusual arrangement as taking parking to the "next level", but his reaction also came with a serious warning.

He questioned whether the roof was designed to support the SUV's weight and urged others not to copy the idea.

The bizarre parking arrangement was reported in Gopalganj, Bihar.

According to Indian media reports, the vehicle belongs to Manoj Yadav, who works in Israel and had recently purchased the Scorpio Classic.

With Yadav overseas and reportedly no one available to drive the vehicle, his family faced the question of where to keep it.

Their solution was considerably more elaborate than finding another parking space.

They hired a crane.

Video circulating online shows the white SUV suspended high above the ground before being lowered onto the rooftop of the family's two-storey home.

Reports said concerns about keeping the new vehicle safe while Yadav was away were behind the decision.

Earlier reports accompanying the viral footage contained limited independently verified information about the owner and location. Subsequent coverage, including Anand Mahindra's own account of the incident, identified Yadav and Gopalganj.

The video eventually reached Mahindra, whose company manufactures the Scorpio.

"Now that's what you call taking parking to the next level," he wrote on X.

Mahindra joked that he had always believed the Scorpio could go almost anywhere, but said the family appeared to have taken that reputation particularly seriously.

He gave them "full marks" for their ingenuity and affection for the vehicle.

Then came the concern.

Mahindra said he worried about whether the roof was designed to bear the SUV's weight.

He ended his post with a warning: "Please don't try this at (your) home!"

No publicly available information confirms that the residential roof was specifically engineered to carry a vehicle.

The sight of a full-size SUV sitting where people would normally expect to see water tanks, washing lines or solar panels quickly generated reactions online.

Some users were amused by the extreme approach to keeping the vehicle secure, while others raised the same safety question as Mahindra.

Placing a heavy vehicle on a residential roof can impose substantial loads on a structure, making its engineering capacity important.

The video also leaves one obvious practical question unanswered: what happens when Yadav wants his Scorpio back?

Unless there is another way down, the same solution that put it there may be needed again.

Another crane.