Vehicle lightweight drives the adoption of new materials on automobile body structures. As a prerequisite for designing safe and reliable new material vehicle body, knowledge of testing and simulating new joining methods is of critical importance. In this study, a high strength steel adhesive joint reinforced by rivet is investigated first using mechanical tests to account for the effect of joint type and loading conditions, then numerically characterized using finite element simulation with simplified joint models. Results show that (1) adhesive and rivet conditionally enhance each other in the hybrid joint and (2) the calibrated adhesive/rivet model is validated in the hybrid joint, proving to be an effective and efficient tool for full vehicle simulation.