His father inspired him to start with car racing and by doing so, he became his big promoter and racing-manager who supported him actively over and over again. In 1947, three days before the ACS-Section hill climb at Gempen (BL), the Walters visited a showroom in Basel where a 2-litre-Bugatti with a special body was standing next to an Alfa Romeo from the 30’s. The Bugatti was made the same year that Heini Walter was born, so this and the car's good looks made him buy it. The price was CHF 12'000.-, which was extraordinarily high in those days. In order to be able to start at the Gempen hill climb, Heini Walter quickly had to become a member of the ACS and had to pay twice the starting fee. He successfully completed his debut with the already twenty-year-old car, and came in second in this race.

In the following years until 1952, during which he could also celebrate his first class victory at the Vue-des-Alpes hill climb with his new Bugatti 35B, he only participated in races sporadically, because the building up of the parental businesses took a lot of time. In 1953 and 1954 he had different classifications at races for the Swiss Championship with a BMW 328 and a Talbot 4500. In 1954 Heini Walter bought the AFM Monoposto from Hans Stuck. The Fridolin company in Freiburg (Germany) built a nice sports car body for the AFM chassis and he started at some races with this car. Unfortunately, it was not a big success.