00:01I'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.
00:11The world's only wooden supercar.
00:24Just 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
00:45it out of material like wood would present an interesting challenge.
00:54Wood is our only naturally renewable, totally biodegradable building material. It has a better
00:59strength to weight ratio than steel and aluminum, and it's just a beautiful material. It's a lot
01:04of fun to work with.
01:09I 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 wood steering
01:38wheel. There's no metal in that steering wheel anywhere whatsoever. It's nothing but wooden glue.
01:44A shaft that you see coming through the middle is the gear shift. The transmission's behind the
01:49engine in this car, and the shift linkage goes over the top of the engine. Wheels were a ton of
01:54work.
01:54They're the most complicated part. Wood's very strong, but it's also soft, so when you come to these
02:00hard points of metal, you need to be able to spread that load out over a larger area.
02:09The splinter was built over a nine-year period of time. When I was in graduate school, I was lucky
02:15enough to where my dad would pay for me to eat and go to school and live, so I didn't
02:19have any other
02:20responsibilities other than to work on this car. It's a ton of work. Pain, suffering, and sanding.
02:27As far as I can remember, the tires are the only completely off-the-shelf piece of this car.
02:33I knew it would be a ton of work. I get asked the how many hours did this take question
02:37a lot.
02:38I tell people 20,000 hours. It was a very slow, very time-intensive process, thinking how'd I get
02:45myself into all this. It ends up pulling everybody that's close to you into a project like this.
02:51I lived through the 10 years of building it. That was quite an experience. It's still completely
02:57relevant today and looks totally different from anything else I've ever seen. It was a lot of blood,
03:03sweat, and tears for sure. Mostly tears on my part.
03:11It has a seven-liter small block V8. We think it makes about 650 horsepower. It has a six-speed
03:17manual
03:17transmission, airbag suspension at all four corners so we can adjust the height. It's a very, very low
03:22vehicle and we have to get it on and off of trailers a lot, so being able to pick it
03:26up and down helps.
03:28It's hot, noisy, uncomfortable. You can't see out of the back of it. You can barely see out of the
03:37front of it. You're in a really, really low driving position. That's kind of part of what makes it raw
03:43and makes it exciting. It's not exactly the most practical vehicle in the world. It's not very good
03:51as a grocery getter. The fastest I've been in the vehicle is probably 30 miles an hour. I'm sure it
04:05has a top speed. I have no idea what it is. With the weight and the aerodynamics and the power
04:10that it
04:11makes, you know, maybe the engine can push this thing to 200 miles an hour. I don't know. I feel
04:17fairly certain that it will never happen, but it's probably theoretically possible. The car was
04:22really built as a building and engineering exercise to show people that you could do it.
04:28Heat is a concern. What'll happen is if this car gets too hot, it'll start letting go and the panels
04:33will get droopy and they'll fall apart. Every vehicle can catch on fire fairly easily. It just so happens
04:40with this one. There will be less left over at the end if it does catch on fire.
04:52When I look back on it, I think about all the good times I had. The coolest thing about the
04:56splinter
04:56for me was getting to go through this process and realize that I've got the absolute best friends and
05:01family that anybody could ever ask for. How many splinters did I actually get during the build? I lost
05:07track. I got my fair share for a lifetime's worth.
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