HANDMADE’S TALE

THOSE “ONE MAN, ONE ENGINE” SIGNATURE NAMEPLATES ON HIGH-PERFORMANCE MOTORS DON’T MEAN WHAT YOU MIGHT THINK.

BY PROF. ALBERT J. BAIME

JOE HARMON KNOWS about working with his hands. Starting in 2006, the industrial designer from North Carolina spent about 20,000 hours (think about that amount for a second) building “the world’s only wooden supercar,” as he calls it. He carved the Harmon Splinter out of maple, ash, birch, hickory, cherry, walnut, balsa, and oak. While a Corvette engine powers the car, he handcrafted the rest of the Splinter himself, down to the wooden spokes in the wheels and even a stately Harmon logo. Recently, I test-drove a Cadillac CT5-V Black-wing, which bore a plaque on its supercharged 6.2-liter V-8 that read “Handcrafted by Anthony Terry, Performance Build Center, USA.” There were no noticeable fingerprints on this hulking motor. Clearly, not one single component of this engine was actually built by hand.…

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Road & Track (Digital) - 1 Issue, August/September 2022

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