The Splinter: How A Designer Built A Supercar Almost Entirely Out Of Wood

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 told us: “I’ve wanted to design and build my own car for my whole life. And we thought building it out of material like wood would present an interesting challenge that might make us do some out of the box things and it would make it a little bit more of a scholastic endeavour.” 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. Each wheel consists of over 275 individual pieces. The wheel centres are made from rotary-cut oak veneer, covered by a walnut sunburst on the outside face and a cherry sunburst on the inside face. The Splinter's engine is a 7.0L small-block V8. The chassis is built almost entirely of wood composites, the body is made from woven strips of cherry veneer with a balsa core. 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. He said: “The car was built as a design and build exercise to kind of show people what's possible and try to figure out for ourselves what we thought was possible.”