AS Special
The 1948 AS Special is an obscure Swedish one-off, a home-built microcar rather than a product of any established manufacturer. It was constructed in Borås, Sweden, by the machinist Axel Stridsberg — the “AS” of its name evidently deriving from his initials — and is dated to 1948.
It was a small open two-seater classified as a microcar and three-wheeler, powered by a Harley-Davidson motorcycle engine. Stridsberg began the project after seeing a picture of something similar in 1945.
What survives is a single archival photograph. It shows a low, streamlined open two-seater with right-hand drive, wire-spoke front wheels, faired-in headlamps, a rounded nose with vertical grille slats bearing a round badge, a flat multi-pane windscreen, and fully skirted rear bodywork tapering into a teardrop tail — a styling vocabulary reminiscent of pre-war streamlined racers, here executed on a diminutive, home-built scale.
