Last week, while visiting the Espoon Automuseo, located in the verdant countryside of Espoo in southern Finland, I spotted a red single seater tucked in a corner of the barn that hosts the collection.
The plaque says it is a Mateju Mk 2 Formula Vee: I’ve never heard of such a marque before, and searching for the name in the Forum doesn’t yield any result, so I thought it would be a good idea to open my first thread on the Nostalgia Forum since…a long while, and try to collect some data on car and builder.
From what I gathered translating from finnish a couple of panels at the museum, Mateju was active from 1969 to 1976. The name of the brand comes from the initial letters of the builder and designer of the cars, TEuvo Sammal and JUha Signus, with the MA coming from Sammal’s eldest son Marko.
The first Mateju was completed in the summer of 1969, but it was never entered into a competition. The car was wedge shaped, and almost at the same time the similarly styled Max Johanson’s Veemax MK IV was under construction. According to its creators the Mateju Mk I wasn’t good enough in terms of drivability, so the car was modified into its Mk II form for the 1970 season. The first races it was entered in were the Midsummer races at Keimola.
The car was further modified for 1971 Finnish Formula Vee season.
The next model (Mk III) was designed by Pertti Kiveri and made its debut in 1972. Again this model was modified and different versions of the same car were used on track at the same time during 1974.
The first Mateju monocoque, the MK IV, was built in 1976 and raced with different wings configurations during the following years. Olli Pohjanpalo and Jorma ”Bisse” Airaksinen joined the usual drivers Teuvo Sammal and Juha Signus from 1978.
Matejus were raced at least until 1981 in the Finnish Formula Ford 1600 & Formula VW combined championship and then in historic championships.
It would be nice to know more about the people involved in the project, and also to understand how many of these cars were built. The caption at the museum says 2 Mk II were built and a posting about a Mk IV for sale floating online quotes 4 cars of the type were completed, but I can’t find other data.
On this Finnish photo archive you can find some pictures of Mateju cars:
https://meze.kuvat.fi/searchresults/mateju/
https://meze.kuvat.fi/searchresults/sammal/
I hope someone out there has some more informations!
