00:00Walter had his military service.
00:03Next, he ended up fighting wildfires.
00:06He's been to Burning Man 11 times.
00:08He's worked events for Google and SpaceX.
00:11You don't see something like this every day.
00:13It makes you wonder how the heck did that thing get created.
00:20Walter is a 2 to 1 scale Volkswagen bus.
00:25But Walter certainly wasn't built this way.
00:28Assembled as a fire truck in 1963,
00:31Walter saw years of Air Force service
00:34before moving to the New River Fire Department in Arizona.
00:37A couple of us found Walter in an old abandoned junkyard,
00:43parked never to move again.
00:45Kirk and a few friends set about an incredible conversion.
00:51In his original form,
00:53he kind of looked like a giant Volkswagen bus.
00:55He was boxy and had a split front windshield.
01:00And the driving position was out in front of the front wheels,
01:04which was very, very helpful in ultimately doing the design
01:09and pleating the fabrication.
01:12The 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.
01:25I am the lead mechanic behind Walter the bus.
01:28Original 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, I'd call the observation deck, the big party deck on top,
01:40you're actually walking on the roof of the original fire truck.
01:44When you're in the cab, when you're sitting in the driver's seat,
01:47you are sitting about five feet above where the original driver's seat was
01:51and all the controls are just extended up through the floor
01:53and you're able to drive like that.
01:58From firefighter to party starter,
02:00this vehicle is packing a serious sound system.
02:03Walter actually has 85 speakers on him.
02:06It takes a lot to be able to compact 85 speakers,
02:09so we had to hide a few.
02:15I 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,
02:21we had to take the rear springs off and have them recurved
02:24because they were flattened out from so much weight
02:27and so many people up here.
02:28I have backup cameras and cameras all around
02:33so I'd be able to see when I'm doing anything in tight spaces
02:36or with a crowd.
02:38Essentially, kind of be able to drive a two-story house
02:41from the second-story window.
02:42Quite a trip to be able to drive this thing.
02:45And at 30 feet long and 13 feet tall,
02:47this vehicle makes a big impression out on the road.
02:55Take the whole lane here.
02:56We need the whole road.
03:03There we go.
03:05Walter drives a lot like a Volkswagen bus.
03:09There's just something special about the way you drive a vehicle
03:13when you're over the front tires.
03:16Whenever anybody sees Walter, it's a smile, a wave, and you just don't see something like this
03:28driving down the road every day.
03:31I think the coolest part of Walter is just like that.
03:34Just like whoever that was,
03:35they certainly weren't expecting to see something like this today.
03:38It brightens your day.
03:40It opens your eyes.
03:41It makes you wonder what else might be possible.
03:43And just wonder how the heck did that thing get created.
03:47Get created.
03:48Get created.
03:54You're right.
03:55Don't know.
03:56There's a lot of people who aren't fine with it.
03:57And you're on the side.
03:58There's a lot of people who don't need it here.
03:59There's a lot of people that may not miss.
04:00There's a lot of people that might not miss,
04:01and it does not miss.
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