00:00 Walter had his military service. Next, he ended up fighting wildfires. He's been to
00:06 Burning Man 11 times. He's worked events for Google and SpaceX. You don't see something
00:12 like this every day. It makes you wonder how the heck did that thing get created.
00:16 Walter is a two-to-one scale Volkswagen bus.
00:25 But Walter certainly wasn't built this way. Assembled as a fire truck in 1963, Walter
00:32 saw years of Air Force service before moving to the New River Fire Department in Arizona.
00:37 A couple of us found Walter in an old abandoned junkyard, parked never to move again.
00:45 Kirk and a few friends set about an incredible conversion.
00:51 In his original form, he kind of looked like a giant Volkswagen bus. He was boxy and had
00:57 a split front windshield. And the driving position was out in front of the front wheels,
01:04 which was very, very helpful in ultimately doing the design and pleating the fabrication.
01:11 The team that assembled to turn this old fire truck into a Volkswagen bus has really become
01:19 a family.
01:21 I am Nate Matzenbacher. I am the lead mechanic behind Walter the Bus. The original chassis
01:29 of the fire truck is still there. It's all underneath this shell of what is the bus now.
01:35 When you're in the, I call the observation deck, the big party deck on top, you're actually
01:41 walking on the roof of the original fire truck. When you're in the cab, when you're sitting
01:46 in the driver's seat, you are sitting about five feet above where the original driver's
01:51 seat was and all the controls are just extended up through the floor and you're able to drive
01:55 like that.
01:56 From firefighter to party starter, this vehicle is packing a serious sound system.
02:04 Walter actually has 85 speakers on him. It takes a lot to be able to compact 85 speakers,
02:09 so we had to hide a few.
02:15 I can't say for sure how many people we've ever had up here is the max, but I can tell
02:19 you that after one event we had to take the rear springs off and had them recurved because
02:25 they were flattened out from so much weight and so many people up here.
02:28 I have backup cameras and cameras all around so I'd be able to see when I'm doing anything
02:35 in tight spaces or with a crowd. Essentially, kind of be able to drive a two-story house
02:41 from the second-story window. Quite a trip to be able to drive this thing.
02:44 And at 30 feet long and 13 feet tall, this vehicle makes a big impression out on the road.
02:51 Take the whole lane here. We need the whole road.
02:58 There we go.
03:04 Walter drives a lot like a Volkswagen bus. There's just something special about the way
03:11 you drive a vehicle when you're over the front tires.
03:16 Whenever anybody sees Walter, it's a smile, a wave, and you just don't see something like
03:27 this driving down the road every day.
03:29 I think the coolest part of Walter is just like that. Whoever that was, they certainly
03:35 weren't expecting to see something like this today. It brightens your day. It opens your
03:40 eyes. Makes you wonder what else might be possible and just wonder how the heck did
03:45 that thing get created.
03:48 [Music]
03:54 [BLANK_AUDIO]
