The Saab Sonett is a 2-door Roadster (automobile) / roadster / 2-door coupé from Saab Automobile, built from 1955 to 1974, at the height of the post-war boom. Under the bonnet: 750 cc Saab 2-stroke I3. Sixten Sason drew it.
How it came about
The Saab Sonett is an automobile manufactured by Swedish automaker Saab between 1955 and 1957 and again between 1966 and 1974. The Sonett share its engines and other mechanical components with the Saab 93, 95 and 96 of the same era.
It was mainly intended for the lucrative American export market and was only offered intermittently in the Swedish domestic market for the 1968 and 1972 model years. The first prototype, now known as the Sonett I, is a two-seat, open-top, lightweight roadster racer. Ten years later, the name was revived for the commercially distributed Sonett models II, V4, and III.
The hardware
Power comes from 750 cc Saab 2-stroke I3. It weighs 500 kg. It shifts through a 4-speed manual. The layout matters: the engine sits behind the driver and ahead of the rear axle, which puts the mass in the middle of the car and is why mid-engined cars change direction the way they do. The wheelbase is 85 in. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
Its family tree is legible: assembly was at Trollhättan. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the Nissan Skyline — show what else the money bought that year. Its Saab Automobile stablemates include the Saab 60 and the Saab 600.
What it costs now
There is no federal ownership record for the Saab Sonett — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.