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  • STEVE: Our client came to us with a problem. They

  • said, 'Weve got two school busses but only one parking space. Can you help us?' We were

  • like, 'yes, we can.'

  • COMM: This topsy-turvy school bus is the handiwork

  • of art car fabricatorsThe Mutant Brothers’.

  • TOM: It’s 24 feet long and it’s 13 feet

  • 1 inch high. And it’s 14,700 pounds.

  • TOM: I’d say right now the top speed is

  • about 50. But

  • STEVE: Ooh, boy, that’s downhill with a

  • tail weight.

  • COMM: It was a commission from environmental

  • agency Hazon. It runs on bio-diesel, has a solar panel array, and is used as a mobile

  • classroom.

  • COMM: It started as two individual school

  • busses, and the build posed a few problems.

  • STEVE: You figure alright we will take 2 school

  • busses, cut the roof off of both of them, unbolt one of them from the frame, turn it

  • upside down and put it on top of the other one. And that sounds great until you actually

  • have to do that. And then you start thinking well how do you turn a school bus upside down.

  • So we had to make our own rotisserie. We got a big massive piece of pipe and we bolted

  • some huge pieces of bigger pieces of pipe in the school bus, and then ran this pipe

  • right the way down the centre, made some stands. We would then pull the whole thing up into

  • the air with block and tackle with chain falls in each corner, pull the whole thing up into

  • the air, then put these big stands at each end of this piece of pipe, and then lower

  • it down onto the stands, and then we could spin the entire bus.

  • TOM: Scariest thing I have ever done at work.

  • STEVE: It’s pretty nerve racking.

  • TOM: It was.

  • COMM: As unique as it might look this is actually

  • the second topsy-turvy bus that’s been built.

  • STEVE: The topsy-turvy bus was originally

  • the idea of Ben Cohen from Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream, and he wanted something that would

  • protest government spending, saying it was upside down. And so he had this artist, Tom

  • Kennedy, in California build the original topsy-turvy bus. It ended up in the hands

  • of this environmental organisation called Hazon, and they get such a fantastic reaction

  • from it that they decided they wanted another one. Unfortunately, Tom Kennedy was killed

  • in a surfing accident, so he was unable obviously to build it so they found us, The Mutant Brothers.

  • And got in touch, and we are likeSure, we can build that’.

  • TOM: People at first just think it’s just

  • a bus but then they see the hood and the tyres up in the air and they are like, ‘What the

  • heck is that?’ And you get that a lot, it’s like people will say, ‘Well, what is it?

  • You know, what’s it for?

  • STEVE: I often wonder what it is that people

  • say when they go home after seeing one of these vehicles. You just know they are going

  • to go home and say to their wife or their husband or the family, whoever, ‘You will

  • never guess what I saw today.’ And I’d love to know what it is they, how they describe

  • it. Almost from the get-go, I think, we started talking about what next, and we love it when

  • people stop by, and they have ideas, and they tell us, ‘Oh you know what you should build,

  • you should build a huge watermelon car,’ or whatever it is.

STEVE: Our client came to us with a problem. They

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