Quick Facts
Biography
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 (107 cm high), 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.
In 1987 Sven-Harry Åkesson designed a new car called Sethera. It was a car with butterfly doors and flip front and flip rear. The weight of the 418 cm long body was 100 kg. The car was produced by Sh-Design in Landskrona and like the Silver Hawk you could either use a VW chassis or a steel tube chassis that could take a more powerful engine. About 200 Setheras were sold, most in Sweden. In 1989 Åkesson met a Frenchman who was interested in selling the Sethera in Europe. This required a redesign called Sethera Mk1 that was designed for Ford parts. Just a few Sethera Mk1 were made in Sweden before the production was taken over by a company in the Netherlands in 1991. As of 1997 they were still being made. In Europe they were also sold as turn-key ready and built using Audi 100 parts.
After that Sven-Harry Åkesson was hired to make extreme road racer called Sethera Falcon. They aimed at a weight of 700 kg and 380 hp giving a top speed of over 360 km/h. But after a while the project was put on hold. The chassis design was bought a few years later by the Koenigsegg family which in a modified form became the chassis for the first Koenigsegg 1996 prototype. Koenigsegg CC. Later on Koenigsegg developed their own Carbonfiber monocoque for their production cars.
In 1995 Sven-Harry Åkesson finished his next car. It was an AC Cobra replica he built with his son Per-Gunnar. No production is planned.[1]