Raw to Ready

See tempered glass, titanium, fiberglass, lacquer and aluminum alloy become a cutting-edge jet.

The highway truck — a modern workhorse, a heavy hauler vital to commerce — carries an 80,000-pound payload and must operate in every condition from sub-zero cold to triple-digit heat. To survive, it must be strong, durable and fuel-efficient, like the Mack Pinnacle, an engineering achievement made possible by platinum, petroleum, copper, manganese and polyurethane.

It’s a century-old obsession to find the right raw materials to build a car that is fit for both king and race car driver — perfectly luxurious and perfectly fast. The Bentley Motor Company has built common raw ingredients into their signature Mulsanne, an engineering achievement made possible by aluminum, leather, iron, wood and pigment.

To extract precious metals found beneath the earth requires a massive 232-ton, two-story-tall dump truck with a load capacity of 320 tons — a giant earth-mover like the Komatsu 930E. This amazing engineering achievement is made possible by five essential raw ingredients: coal, chromium, mineral oil, latex rubber and sulphuric acid, an electron superhighway that generates massive power.