Sven-Harry Åkesson

Who is Sven-Harry Åkesson?

Sven-Harry Åkesson, born March 12, 1940, is an automobile designer from Sweden. His first car was built in 1959 as a Formula Junior racer, but after a while he came to the conclusion that it was going to be too heavy so he abandoned the build. In 1961 he started another Formula Junior build he called Spider Mark I. It was 3.5 metres long with a wheelbase of 2.2 metres. At the highest point it was only 77 centimetres high. The engine was a BMC A-Series engine mated to a Volkswagen gearbox. The steering came from a Lloyd and the brakes were originally from a Fiat, but rebuilt. In 1962 he built a Mark II also powered by a BMC-A engine. In 1965 came the Spider Mark III, still with a BMC-A engine, but now tuned by Speedwell. It was followed by the Mark IV. He kept producing a new car each year for himself and some other interested buyers. About 20 formula cars were made.

In the early 1980s his son approached his 18th birthday and Sven-Harry Åkesson started building a car for his son. The car was finished in 1983 and was called Silver Hawk. It used a Volkswagen 1600 chassis and had a low, streamlined body. It had a targa top and pop-up headlights. The car was displayed at a kit-car exhibition in Uppsala and many were interested in it so Åkesson founded the company Plastinova to produce the cars. The cars were sold both with or without a chassis as you could either use VW chassis or buy a steel tube chassis. Later the a chassis also was made for mid engines. He sold 330 bodies and 20 chassis. In 1986 the manufacturing rights was sold to a person in Finland and they were still made in 1997.