DCIM\100GOPRO DCIM\100GOPRO DCIM\100GOPRO Vienna Nightrun 2010

It took four years, €60,000 – that's $81,150 here in the States – and more welding than the San Francisco Bay Bridge retrofit, but Bernd Berger and his crew created the ultimate snowbound DJ party rig. They describe it as the "super stylisches pistengerät," which roughly translates to "super stylish slope device" – a name so stereotypically Austrian that we can't help but love it that much more.

The tank-treaded lovechild of a 1966 Volkswagen T1 bus and a late-'60s Bombardier snow groomer, the arctic-ready and beach-friendly DJ booth was originally commissioned in 2005 and underwent a half-dozen builds before becoming the fully functional, pop-top rig you see today.

"The main problem was the body of the VW," Berger told Wired, "because without the chassis the whole structure [was compromised]."

Of course, cutting the roof off didn't help. The solution was retrofitting the bus with lateral steel bars and welding the front doors to the body, leaving the sliding door on the passenger side as the only way to get in. The team then added heavy-duty pneumatics to a platform that lifts the DJ and his gear more than 10 feet in the air. A custom plastic roof keeps everything dry.

If you're curious about what powers the treads, the crew opted for the wonderfully odd Ford Taunus V4, an engine that mercifully never made it to the States. Far more impressive is the 1,000-watt subwoofer, a 5-channel Behringer mixer and two Technic 1210 turntables to keep the jams pumping. The gear sucks juice from a Honda generator.

Berger claims the setup can be ready to rock the slopes in three minutes flat, but it'll take a while to get up there – the "slope device" has a maximum speed of 9 mph and weighs more than two tons, which means during promotional events they've concocted some interesting ways to get it up the mountain. Check the gallery above to see what we mean.

All photos courtesy of BB-Support