Meet The Splinter: The World’s First Wooden Supercar Built From 90% Wood

Ridiculous Rides

THE WORLD’S only wooden supercar, known as the "Splinter”, is a high-performance sports car that is estimated to be 90% wood. Fuelled by a lifelong desire to design and build his own car and inspired by a WWII airplane called the de Havilland Mosquito, designer and builder, Joe Harmon, from Mooresville, North Carolina, spent roughly nine years working on the Splinter with the help of his team. The Splinter began as a graduate school project at North Carolina State University and has continued since. Joe said that the goal was to use wood in the construction of the car in every possible application - wood is our only naturally renewable building material, it is biodegradable and takes a small amount of energy to produce. Also, according to Joe, wood has a better strength-to-weight ratio than steel and aluminium. Every wooden part of the Splinter is made from composite construction. Even though the car is not comfortable and may be impractical, Joe said that the goal in creating this car was to explore new ideas and perceptions of wood.   Videographer / Director: Christopher Brown Producer: Frazer Randalls, Rafaela Kuznec Editor: Ian Phillips

Transcript

00:00I've wanted to design and build my own car for my whole life, and we thought

00:06building it out of material like wood would present an interesting challenge.

00:10The world's only wooden supercar.

00:23Just a ton of work, a lot of blood, sweat, and tears went into it. Obviously a lot of

00:28sandpaper as well.

00:31I'm Joe Harmon. I am the designer and builder of the world's only wooden supercar.

00:40I've wanted to design and build my own car for my whole life, and we thought building it

00:45out of material like wood would present an interesting challenge.

00:54This is our only naturally renewable, totally biodegradable building material. It has a

00:59better strength to weight ratio than steel and aluminum, and it's just a beautiful material.

01:04It's a lot of fun to work with.

01:05I think there are roughly 20 different species of wood in the car. We try to stick to North

01:13American hardwoods. From an engineering standpoint, we all consider to be interchangeable based

01:17on their density and strength. Walnut, cherry, maple, birch, hickory, ash. Most of the chassis

01:26is birch and maple. Wheels are walnut. The rest isn't mixed back. So interior wise, all

01:37wood steering wheel. There's no metal in that steering wheel anywhere whatsoever. It's nothing

01:41but wooden glue. A shaft that you see coming through the middle is the gear shift. The transmission's

01:48behind the engine in this car, and the shift linkage goes over the top of the engine. Wheels

01:54were a ton of work. They're the most complicated part. Wood's very strong, but it's also soft,

01:59so when you come to these hard points of metal, you need to be able to spread that load out

02:03over a larger area. The splinter was built over a nine-year period of time. When I was

02:14in graduate school, I was lucky enough to where my dad would pay for me to eat and go to school

02:18and live, so I didn't have any other responsibilities other than to work on this car. It's a ton of

02:23work. Pain, suffering, and sanding. As far as I can remember, the tires are the only completely

02:31off-the-shelf piece of this car. I knew it would be a ton of work. I get asked the how

02:36many hours did this take question a lot. I tell people 20,000 hours. It was very slow,

02:41very time-intensive process. Thinking how'd I get myself into all this. It ends up pulling

02:48everybody that's close to you into a project like this. I lived through the ten years of building

02:53it. That was quite an experience. It's still completely relevant today and looks totally

03:00different from anything else I've ever seen. It was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears for sure.

03:06Mostly tears on my part.

03:07It has a seven-liter small block V8. We think it makes about 650 horsepower. It has a six-speed manual

03:17transmission, airbag suspension at all four corners so we can adjust the height. It's a very,

03:22very low vehicle and we have to get it on and off of trailers a lot, so being able to pick it up and

03:26down helps. It's hot, noisy, uncomfortable.

03:31You can't see out of the back of it. You can barely see out of the front of it.

03:38You're in a really, really low driving position. That's kind of part of what makes it raw and makes

03:44it exciting. It's not exactly the most practical vehicle in the world. It's not very good as a grocery

03:51getter.

04:00The fastest I've been in the vehicle is probably 30 miles an hour. I'm sure it has a top speed.

04:05I have no idea what it is. With the weight and the aerodynamics and the power that it makes,

04:12you know, maybe the engine can push this thing to 200 miles an hour. I don't know. I feel fairly

04:17certain that it will never happen, but it's probably theoretically possible.

04:22The car was really built as a building and engineering exercise to show people that you

04:26could do it. Heat is a concern. What'll happen is if this car gets too hot, it'll start letting go

04:33and the panels will get droopy and they'll fall apart. Every vehicle can catch on fire fairly easily.

04:39Just so happens with this one, there will be less left over at the end if it does catch on fire.

04:47When I look back on it, I think about all the good times I had. The coolest thing about the splinter

04:56for me was getting to go through this process and realize that I've got the absolute best friends

05:01and family that anybody could ever ask for. How many splinters did I actually get during the build? I lost

05:07this track. I got my fair share for a lifetime's worth.

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