Saab Sonett

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.

Sonett I

In the 1950s, Rolf Mellde—a Saab engine developer and race enthusiast—along with Lars Olov Olsson, Olle Lindkvist, and Gotta Svensson, designed a two-seat roadster prototype in a barn in Åsaka, near Trollhättan (the site of the main Saab manufacturing facility). The limited research-and-development project, with a total budget of only 75,000 Swedish kronor, first came to be known as the Saab 94 but was later renamed as the Sonett, a name derived from the Swedish phrase Så nätt den är ("how neat it is", or more literally "it's so neat") by the car's designer Sixten Sason. This name was initially rejected by Saab's management but was eventually accepted in October 1955 when the first prototype was completed. The Sonett shares a lot of components from the 93 Saloon such as the front suspension, engine and gearbox. The engine and gearbox were rotated 180-degrees and fitted behind the front axle. This required reversing the engine's direction of rotation which was easily achieved due to the engine being a 2-stroke unit.