For over a year now, Joe Harmon and his crew of graduate students from North Carolina State University have been building the Splinter, a “Supercar” made mostly from wood. This car is Joe’s NC State Master’s thesis, a project which he explains is a “scholastic endeavor in which we are simply trying to explore materials, learn, teach, share ideas, and stimulate creativity.”
Wood is being used in every possible part of the car, including the chassis, body, and large percentages of the suspension components and wheels. Don’t be fooled, this isn’t a wooden car sculpture, this is going to be a high performance street machine. Joe and his team are aiming for a target weight of about 2,500 lbs and over 600 horses under the wood veneer hood.
Now before I get an avalanche of nasty emails, let me just say that this car is not a shining example of sustainability. It’s not intended to be. This is an endeavor in innovation and creativity. I think it’s greenUP-worthy because it is breaking from convention like this that reminds us to rethink design, process, and materials.
Finding creative solutions for and creative use of materials that we have is a key to sustainability. Although not motivated by a passion for the environment, Joe’s team has done a lot of the 3 R’s. Mainly because they are grad students and not funded by government bailout money, Joe and his team spent much of their time scavenging through junkyards, scrap yards, and back yards to find the materials they needed.
See photos of the process on the next page…
A truly beautiful design. I’m most interested in the acoustic properties of what is essentially a wooden guitar body that you sit in just inches from a 600 hp engine. The Sydney Opera House has an acoustically tuned amphitheater that is independent from the concrete outer shell. When low notes are played on the built in pipe organ, the entire structure resonates beautifully. Spend a little extra time tuning those exhaust notes Joe.
I am wondering what kind of wood they used for the chassis. with 600 hp and who know how much torque i just imagine that poor chassis snapping the first time they try to open the throttle a bit. but then again when it come to handling the wood chassis might actually make the car a little more fogiving.. dunno hard to tell.. i guess non of this is the point of the project really..
OMG! He’s building a new Morgan.