00:00Walter had his military service. Next, he ended up fighting wildfires. He's been to
00:06Burning Man 11 times. He's worked events for Google and SpaceX. You don't see something
00:12like this every day. It makes you wonder, how the heck did that thing get created?
00:20Walter is a two-to-one scale Volkswagen bus.
00:25But Walter certainly wasn't built this way.
00:28Assembled as a fire truck in 1963, Walter saw years of Air Force service before moving
00:35to the New River Fire Department in Arizona.
00:38A couple of us found Walter in an old abandoned junkyard, parked never to move again.
00:45Kirk and a few friends set about an incredible conversion.
00:50In his original form, he kind of looked like a giant Volkswagen bus.
00:55He was boxy and had a split front windshield.
00:59And the driving position was out in front of the front wheels.
01:04Which was very, very helpful in ultimately doing the design and pleating the fabrication.
01:11The team that assembled to turn this old fire truck into a Volkswagen bus
01:17has really become kind of family.
01:24I am Nate Motzenbacher. I am the lead mechanic behind Walter the Bus.
01:28The original chassis of the fire truck is still there.
01:31It's all underneath this shell of what is the bus now.
01:36When you're in the observation deck, the big party deck on top,
01:40you're actually walking on the roof of the original fire truck.
01:43When you're in the cab, when you're sitting in the driver's seat,
01:46you are sitting about five feet above where the original driver's seat was.
01:50And all the controls are just extended up through the floor and you're able to drive like that.
01:57From firefighter to party starter, this vehicle is packing a serious sound system.
02:03Walter actually has 85 speakers on him.
02:05It takes a lot to be able to compact 85 speakers, so we had to hide a few.
02:14I can't say for sure how many people we've ever had up here is the max,
02:18but I can tell you that after one event, we had to take the rear springs off
02:22and had them recurved because they were flattened out from so much weight
02:26and so many people up here.
02:29I have backup cameras and cameras all around,
02:33so I'd be able to see when I'm doing anything in tight spaces or with a crowd.
02:37Essentially, kind of be able to drive a two-story house from the second-story window.
02:42Quite a trip to be able to drive this thing.
02:44And at 30 feet long and 13 feet tall, this vehicle makes a big impression out on the road.
02:55Take the whole lane here. We need the whole road.
03:03There we go.
03:05Walter drives a lot like a Volkswagen bus.
03:08There's just something special about the way you drive a vehicle when you're over the front tires.
03:19Whenever anybody sees Walter, it's a smile, a wave,
03:24and you just don't see something like this driving down the road every day.
03:30I think the coolest part of Walter is just like that.
03:33Whoever that was, they certainly weren't expecting to see something like this today.
03:37It brightens your day. It opens your eyes.
03:40It makes you wonder what else might be possible
03:43and just wonder how the heck did that thing get created.
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