Have You Seen This? St. George man builds cartoon VW Bus

(YouTube, MyClassicCarTV)


Save Story
Leer en español

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

TOONTOWN — It took a whole team of writers, animators and lawyers to mash up cartoons with the real world in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” but it took only one Utah man to build an incredible cartoon version of a Volkswagen Bus.

St. George resident Ron Berry and his creation, which he called the “Surf Seeker," were featured on the “My Classic Car” TV show in January. The video is currently trending on the internet, and for good reason, as you will soon see.

Host Dennis Gage calls the bus “the ultimate Hot Wheels car,” but that is arguably an understatement. In the first two minutes of the video, you’ll be blown away by the stunning visual aspects of the car. All the features of a classic 23-window bus are there in great detail from rain gutters to engine placement. (Well, except for the fact that it has 24 windows, but we won’t hold splitting the back window against Berry.)

Berry’s attention to detail is almost as impressive as his eye for perfect car-to-cartoon proportion. In fact, to get some of the proportions right, just for the headlights, Berry got creative with 11-inch stainless bowls and au jus cups from Wal-Mart. Of course, a bubble-like vehicle isn’t necessarily conducive to a normal driver side door, so the whole front of the vehicle opens to let the driver in. It’s a thing of beauty and ingenuity, and there are many more delightful details in the video.

If Berry’s eye for detail isn’t enough to impress you, maybe the fact that he built this whole frame by hand will. He shaped the body using sandbags for Pete’s sake. In another feat of hand-crafted ingenuity, there’s not a screw or fastener in sight in the Bus’ interior, continuing the cartoon-like appearance throughout.

The Volkswagen homage runs through the first half of the 15-minute video, and then the pair talks about Berry’s first vehicle, a handmade hot rod woody he calls the “Shorebreak.”

To watch the test-drive portion of the Surf Seeker, jump to the 7:30 mark.


Martha Ostergar is the former video productions manager of KSL.com. She has moved on to write elsewhere, but she can't seem to break her habit of cruising the internet for amazing videos and writing about them. Follow her on Twitter at @monstergar.

Most recent Utah stories

Related topics

UtahHave You Seen This?

STAY IN THE KNOW

Get informative articles and interesting stories delivered to your inbox weekly. Subscribe to the KSL.com Trending 5.
By subscribing, you acknowledge and agree to KSL.com's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

KSL Weather Forecast