Man who made 'incredible' world’s first wooden supercar has left everyone making the same observation
You might have seen some wacky cars out on the road in your time, but have you ever seen one made entirely from wood?
Somewhat hilariously named Splinter, this is one-of-a-kind supercar - handmade and designed by its owner Joe Harmon almost entirely out of a wood.
"I wanted to design and build my own car for my whole life," Harmon said in a video for car-obsessed YouTube channel, Barcroft Cars.
But for Harmon, building a normal car felt a bit pedestrian.
So, instead, he came up with the plan to build it out of wood. Not only does this make the car completely unique, but it also puts the spotlight on how useful wood still is as a building material, that is sustainable and biodegradable.
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He said in the video: "It's a beautiful material, and a lot of fun to work with", and largely used North American hardwoods in the car.
In the comments under the video from Barcroft Cars showing Splinter off, there's a unanimous verdict on the car - everyone thinks it looks like it's from Grand Theft Auto.
The GTA franchise famously has made-up car brands that look a bit like real vehicles without treading on their intellectual property (generally with punny names), so their silhouettes are never exactly like the bestsellers on the market.
Because Splinter is its own design, it therefore looks a little like one of those made-up cars, and the way the light hits the wooden panels also has something eerily game-like about it, since it doesn't respond like the metal we normally expect to be looking at.
This has led one commenter to say: "I thought the thumbnail was GTA 5", while another agreed: "Was expecting a GTA video lmao".
The good news is that this is no bad thing - the cars in GTA are cool, and so is this one, with the video doing a great job of showcasing what makes it so unique.
Of course, while you can build a car's body, interior and steering wheel out of wood as Harmon has done, you can't really build a combustion engine out of it, so there is a standard 7L V8 engine and some other metal parts in the car to make it actually run.
Harmon said that the tyres on the car are one of its very few off-the-shelf parts, too, since there's similarly no real way to replace them.
Amusingly, because of the car's weight and sentimental value, Harmon also said: "It probably has a top speed, but I have no idea what it is". He's been at around 30 miles per hour in it, but no faster - so this really is more of a show car, rather than something to pop to the shops in.