The ursine intruder successfully navigated the handle on the outside of the door -- possibly in a hunt for food -- but seemingly couldn't work out how to open it again from the inside.

"It was there from a little after eleven at night to almost seven in the morning," Mike Pilati told KTVQ in Red Lodge, Montana.

"Every once in a while you'd hear a crunch. I thought it had a garbage can it was chomping on or something. But it was my car it was crunching up," Pilati said.

Pilati and his wife, Maria, called the local sheriff to report the bear break-in, and were told that wildlife officials would be out the following day.

But Pilati needed to get things moving a bit quicker, so early the next morning he gingerly opened the car door with a stick from the safety of a building.

"I reached through that side door there and reached out and popped the door of the car, and the bear came roaring out," he said.

Footage shows the black bear jumping out of the car before scampering off to find her young cubs, who were nearby.

Having got rid of their unwanted guest, the Pilatis went to inspect the damage -- a shattered windshield, a chewed dashboard, a mangled passenger door and a whole lot of smell.

"Bears are stinky creatures," Mike Pilati told the broadcaster.

While the Subaru car -- a brand favored by outdoorsy types -- is no longer in pristine condition, Maria Pilati says the couple have still found reason to smile.

"Now we call a Su-bear-ru," she said.

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© Agence France-Presse