00:00 Our client came to us with a problem. They said we've got two school buses but only one
00:05 parking space. Can you help us? We're like yes we can.
00:13 This topsy-turvy school bus is the handiwork of Artcar fabricators, the Mutant Brothers.
00:19 It's 24 feet long and it's 13 feet one inch high and it's 14,700 pounds.
00:29 I'd say right now the top speed is about 50.
00:31 Oh man, that's downhill with the tailwhip.
00:36 It was a commission from environmental agency Hazan. It runs on biodiesel, has a solar panel
00:42 array and is used as a mobile classroom.
00:46 It started as two individual school buses and the build posed a few problems.
00:53 You figured, alright, well we'll take two school buses, cut the roof off of both of
00:56 them, unbolt one of them from the frame, turn it upside down and put it on top of the other
01:01 one. And that sounds great until you actually have to do that and then you start thinking,
01:06 well how do you turn a school bus upside down? So we had to make our own rotisserie.
01:12 We got a big massive piece of pipe and we bolted some huge pieces of, bigger pieces
01:18 of pipe in the school bus and then ran this pipe right the way down the center, made some
01:24 stands, we would then pull the whole thing up into the air with block and tackle with
01:29 chain force in each corner, pull the whole thing up into the air, then put these big
01:33 stands at each end of this piece of pipe and then lower it down onto the stands and then
01:39 we could spin the entire bus.
01:42 Scariest thing I've ever done at work.
01:44 It's pretty nerve wracking.
01:45 It was.
01:47 As unique as it might look, this is actually the second Topsy Turvy bus that's been built.
01:53 The Topsy Turvy bus was originally the idea of Ben Cohen from Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream
02:00 and he wanted something that would protest government spending saying it was upside down.
02:04 And so he had this artist, Tom Kennedy in California, build the original Topsy Turvy
02:09 bus. It ended up in the hands of this environmental organization called Hazon and they get such
02:15 a fantastic reaction from it that they decided they wanted another one. Unfortunately Tom
02:21 Kennedy was killed in a surfing accident so he was unable obviously to build it so they
02:25 found us, the Mutant Brothers, and got in touch and we're like, "Sure, we can build
02:30 that."
02:34 People at first just think it's a bus but then they see the hood and the tires up in
02:37 the air and they're like, "What the heck is that?" And you get that a lot. It's like people
02:42 say, "Well what is it?" You know, "What's it for?"
02:45 I often wonder what it is that people say when they go home after seeing one of these
02:49 vehicles. You just know they're going to go home and say to their wife or their husband
02:53 or their family, whoever, "You'll never guess what I saw today." And I'd love to know what
02:57 it is, how they describe it.
02:59 Almost from the get-go though, I think we started talking about what's next. And we
03:03 love it when people stop by and they have ideas and they tell us, "Oh, you know what
03:07 you should build? You should build a huge watermelon car," or whatever it is.
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