00:00Our client came to us with a problem.
00:02They said, we've got two school buses, but only one parking space.
00:06Can you help us?
00:06We're like, yes, we can.
00:12This topsy-turvy school bus is the handiwork of art car fabricators, the Mutant Brothers.
00:19Oh, it's 24 feet long, and it's 13 feet 1 inch high.
00:24Right.
00:25And it's 14,700 pounds.
00:28I'd say right now the top speed's about 50.
00:32Ooh, man, that's downhill with a tailway.
00:35It was a commission from environmental agency Hazan.
00:39It runs on biodiesel, has a solar panel array, and is used as a mobile classroom.
00:46It started as two individual school buses, and the build posed a few problems.
00:52You figured, all right, well, we'll take two school buses, cut the roof off of both of them,
00:57unbolt one of them from the frame, turn it upside down, and put it on top of the other one.
01:01And that sounds great until you actually have to do that.
01:04And then you start thinking, well, how do you turn a school bus upside down?
01:09So we had to make our own rotisserie.
01:11We got a big, massive piece of pipe, and we bolted some huge pieces of, bigger pieces of pipe in
01:19the school bus,
01:20and then ran this pipe right the way down the center, made some stands.
01:24We would then pull the whole thing up into the air with block and tackle, with chain falls in each
01:30corner,
01:30pull the whole thing up into the air, then put these big stands at each end of this piece of
01:36pipe,
01:36and then lower it down onto the stands, and then we could spin the entire bus.
01:42Scariest thing I've ever done at work.
01:44It's pretty nerve-wracking.
01:45It was.
01:46As unique as it might look, this is actually the second Topsy-Turvy bus that's been built.
01:52The Topsy-Turvy bus was originally the idea of Ben Cohen from Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream,
02:00and he wanted something that would protest government spending, saying it was upside down.
02:04And so he had this artist, Tom Kennedy, in California, build the original Topsy-Turvy bus.
02:10It ended up in the hands of this environmental organization called Hazan,
02:14and they get such a fantastic reaction from it that they decided they wanted another one.
02:20Unfortunately, Tom Kennedy was killed in a surfing accident, so he was unable, obviously, to build it.
02:24So they found us, the Mutant Brothers, and got in touch, and we're like, sure, we can build that.
02:34People at first just think it's a bus, but then they see the hood and the tires up in the
02:38air,
02:38and they're like, what the heck is that?
02:40And you get that a lot.
02:42It's like people say, well, what is it?
02:43You know, what's it for?
02:45I often wonder what it is that people say when they go home after seeing one of these vehicles.
02:50You just know they're going to go home and say to their wife or their husband or their family, whoever,
02:55you'll never guess what I saw today, and I'd love to know what it is, how they describe it.
02:59Almost from the get-go, though, I think we started talking about what's next.
03:03And we love it when people stop by and they have ideas, and they tell us,
03:06oh, you know what you should build?
03:07You should build a huge watermelon car, or whatever it is.
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