Even those pining for the golden age of the motor car would scarcely credit the ingenuity of Joe Harmon, 27, who has designed and built a remarkable machine, the Splinter. Harmon is a young engineer not afraid to go against the grain and he has branched out into automotive design. When he talks about his invention the timbre of his voice is tinged with real pride:

"we have designed it to have world-class characteristics in all the areas that make a supercar super, like power-to-weight ratio, weight distribution and centre of gravity."

It would be a remarkable achievement for a rooky designer to come up with what is in effect a Formula One concept using the conventional composite mouldings of the industry. However, anyone supposing that this supercharged door-stop is cut from such cloth is, as they say, barking up the wrong tree: the Splinter is a wooden car. Wood has remarkable qualities: its strength to weight ratio is higher than steel or aluminium, so a wooden chassis is in effect more stable than a conventional shell. The body of this car is made of maple and plywood and weighs a mere 1,134 kg. That is a lot more than an MFI wardrobe but rather less than other hot rods of comparable power. The Splinter really is a sprinter und notches up 60mph from a standing start in less than three seconds. That is probably enough time for the driver's face to turn ashen with fear!

Talking of "ashen" brings us inevitably to the major drawback of wood as a casing for high powered combustion engines: it burns. Even when coated with fire retardant chemicals the risk is such that any Kfz Versicherung, insurance, would be unlikely to be forthcoming. Without Autoversicherung no prototype can go into serial production so for the foreseeable future this particular Splinter is unlikely to be a thorn in the side of Porsche or Lamborghini. .

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