Until last year, Hyundai was not a brand automatically associated with gruesome zombie carnage. Then the car company partnered with AMC’s “The Walking Dead” for an integration that found original comic book creator Robert Kirkman converting a kiwi-green Hyundai Tucson into a lean, mean zombie survival machine.

Now an iconic emblem of the series, Hyundai has brought its relationship with “Walking Dead” to the next level by letting fans design their own corpse-killing cars. The new app, Chop Shop, lets the user “build the zombie survival machine of your dreams” from three different Hyundai models, custom graphic decals and nearly 300 pieces of weaponry, armor and other accoutrements for every encounter in the post-apocalypse.

Need to shovel zombies out of the way in large quantities? A horde plow attached to the front grill will take care of all your scooping needs. Or perhaps you’d prefer to blow up groups of stragglers from afar – in that case the mountable mortar cannon allows for fast flesh-exploding on the fly.

The virtual vehicle-building experience occurs in a rotating digital garage that lets the user hone in and customize every angle of the chosen car, from the upper trunk to the exhaust pipe. Completed cars are easily sharable and become part of a contest judged by Kirkman himself, with the winning design receiving its real-life comeuppance at the New York Comic Con in October. Designers receive “survival scores” for each creation and can test them out in scenarios inspired by the comic book. There’s even the option to submit ideas for additional car parts should your survivalist vision not be fulfilled by the hundreds of options currently available. Yearning for a multi-directional, double-barrel flame thrower for your tricked out Hyundai Santa Fe urban utility vehicle but not seeing it on the app? Let the developers know and you might see it brought to life in the Chop Shop weaponry collection.

Chop Shop is approaching 70,000 downloads and, as of this writing, has seen nearly 50,000 cars designed with more than 40,000 social shares. That’s impressive engagement considering Season 4 of “Walking Dead” won’t premiere until October 14 and the app has yet to appear on Android. In line with the show’s core audience, about 80% of the app’s usage has come from 18-34-year-old men, who have been “the sweet spot for our campaign all along,” David Matathia, director of marketing communications for Hyundai USA, recently told brandchannel.“This is a great platform to demonstrate that we get them and think like them and are passionate about the same things they are. It’s a chance to form some early brand impressions.”

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