Joe Harmon, an industrial designer and wood worker, spent five years making a car out of wood — and it's functional.
Harmon showed off the car at the Essen Motor Show in Germany last December. The driveable car, appropriately dubbed Splinter, can still drive since its debut last year, Harmon told Business Insider.
Scroll down for a closer look at Harmon's handiwork:
Harmon started the project eight years ago as a graduate student at North Carolina State University. It took a total of five years to build, as Harmon took some time off after finishing school to start work.
He was inspired by a World War II airplane called the de Havilland Mosquito, which was the fastest piston-driven plane of its era and was made almost entirely out of wood.
The project is meant to show all the different ways wood can be used. Harmon notes that wood has a better strength-to-weight ratio than steel and aluminum.
"Wood is our only naturally renewable building material — it takes an extraordinarily small amount of energy to produce and is totally biodegradable," Harmon wrote in an email. "With a better strength-to-weight ratio than steel and aluminum, it can be made into a lot more things than people tend to give it credit for."
And it's pretty incredible looking.
The wheels are made of three different kinds of wood. The centers were made from oak veneer while the outside face was covered by walnut sunburst. The inside face is made of cherry sunburst.
The car's engine gives it more than 650 horsepower, Harmon said. It also comes with a six-speed manual gearbox.
And the car's chassis is made almost entirely of wood composites.
The doors even swing up to open.
As for what's next: "I have some ideas floating around for what I would like my next project to be," Harmon said. "It's too early to say what I will do next, but it will almost certainly be very different from this car."
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