The Splinter is a very unusual and innovative vehicle.
It's the first supercar ever to be designed and engineered
using wood as the primary construction material. In the
past some vehicles have used wood to various degrees in
their construction, but never to the extent the Splinter
does.
The Splinter is a graduate project by students at North
Carolina State University. Wood has been used where possible,
including the chassis, body, and even a large percentage
of the suspension components and wheels.
While moving components like the suspension might seem
impossible to fashion out of wood, the Splinter team realized
that a leaf spring shares many traits with longbows, flexible,
durable and with progressive spring rates. After research
they decided to use Osage orange wood, which is the strongest
wood found in North America. The front suspension therefore
comprises of a laminated Osage orange wood leaf spring
transversely mounted and providing suspension for both
front wheels.
The wheels of the Splinter are made from rotary cut oak
veneers. Each veneer was rotated 36 degrees from the previous
layer to maximize grain direction alignment with the spokes.
A walnut sunburst was cut for the front while a cherry
sunburst was used on the back.
The mid-engined layout of the Splinter wooden supercar
comprises of a 4.6 litre, twin supercharged V8 mated to
a 6 speed manual gearbox and Getrag limited slip differential.
The Splinter is not intended for mass production, nor
is it designed to break and performance or handling records.
The design is merely to show that with intelligent and
creative thinking a car can be created out of the most
unlikely materials.
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