A recent post by Mad for Saab in the Spanish-language Facebook community Amigos de los Saab-Scania has put one of Saab’s smallest production runs back into enthusiast circulation: the open two-seater now generally known as the Saab Sonett I.
The post touches most of the reasons the car remains so unusual: development away from Trollhättan, a riveted lightweight structure, Saab 93 two-stroke power and only six completed cars. It also repeats several details that have changed slightly as the story has passed from one article to another over the last seven decades.
The surviving documentation is considerably richer. Accounts preserved by the SAAB Veteranerna in Trollhättan, together with material in the SaabMuseum Sonett archive, allow the early sports-car project to be reconstructed in much greater detail – including a few places where the familiar version of the Sonett story is simply too neat.
Before Sonett I, there was the Sonett Super Sport
The car was initially known as the Saab Sonett Super Sport, with Saab 94 becoming associated with the program as development progressed. The origins go back to Rolf Mellde, whose early drawings for a small competition-oriented two-seater date to October 1954.
Mellde’s problem was not styling. Saab’s production cars could be successfully adapted for rallying, but changing competition regulations were creating classes in which a purpose-built light sports car could offer a substantial advantage. His answer was a machine using Saab mechanical components without the mass or packaging requirements of a family sedan.
Work began during 1955 away from Saab’s normal development operation. The location was a barn at Åsaka, roughly 60 km – about 37 miles – from Trollhättan. That figure is worth noting because the barn is sometimes described as being only a few miles from the factory.
The workshop became known among the people involved as “Hemligheta” — effectively, “the secret place.”
The barn was secret; the engineering team was substantial
The popular shorthand tends to reduce the story to Rolf Mellde, Sixten Sason and a few enthusiasts working after hours. The actual team was more specific.
Lars-Olov Olson handled important development and project work. Gösta “Mallgösta” Svensson prepared body patterns and worked with the plastics supplier. Olle Lindkvist from Saab’s engine laboratory was responsible for extracting considerably more power from the 748 cc two-stroke. Mechanic Arne Frick, model maker Sven Fredriksson, aircraft-workshop specialist Erik “Charmis” Johansson and Elis Olsson were also directly involved. Sixten Sason developed the body shape from Mellde’s underlying concept.
The aircraft connection in this case does not need to be added retrospectively as Saab marketing folklore. Johansson came from Saab’s aircraft workshop and knew the forming and riveting techniques required for light alloy sheet structures. Those skills became directly relevant to the first Sonett.
The famous “Så nätt!” naming story needs one important footnote
The most attractive version of the naming story says that Sason saw the finished little sports car and exclaimed “Så nätt!” – something close to “so neat” or “how pretty” – giving Saab the name Sonett. The linguistic association is real. The spontaneous naming scene probably is not.
The SAAB Veteranerna account records that Sason had already proposed Sonett as a possible model name for the Saab 92. Management rejected it then as too soft. When the sports car appeared, the name finally had a suitable vehicle. That version is less theatrical, but historically much more useful: Sonett was not necessarily invented at the moment the prototype was completed.
Sonett No. 1 was structurally different from the other five
The engineering centerpiece of the first car was not its fiberglass body but the structure underneath it.
Instead of a conventional tubular sports-car frame, Mellde developed a riveted stressed-skin light-alloy box structure weighing about 71 kg, or approximately 156 lb. Suspension and drivetrain components were mounted to this exceptionally light central structure.
Production1955–57
Designer Sixten Samson Body and chassis Body style 2-door and 2-seat roadster Layout MF layout Power train Engine 748cc three-cylinder Saab two-stroke.
For the outer body Saab entered comparatively unfamiliar territory. It was molded in glass-fiber-reinforced plastic, with material and manufacturing knowledge supplied with help from SOAB – Svenska Oljeslageri AB in Gothenburg. This is also one of the points where generalized Sonett histories become misleading.
Only Sonett No. 1 used the aluminum structure with a GRP body. The subsequent test cars, Nos. 2 through 6, used steel structural boxes and aluminum bodies. The individual differences are documented in the SaabMuseum breakdown of the six surviving Sonetts. The six cars were therefore not six identical examples from a finalized production line. They were an evolving development series.
That distinction also helps explain why historical sources quote very different vehicle weights. Approximately 500 kg is commonly associated with the Sonett, while a 1957 Teknikens Värld test of one of the later cars described a machine closer to 650 kg. Those numbers should not automatically be applied to the same chassis specification.
57.5 hp was only part of the mechanical story
The engine came from the Saab 93: 748 cc, three cylinders and two-stroke operation. In Sonett specification it produced approximately 57.5 hp at 5,000 rpm, a substantial increase over the early production Saab 93.
Online descriptions sometimes give the Sonett three individual Solex carburetors. Period technical data instead points to a Solex 49 PII dual-choke carburetor. The triple-carburetor image is much more closely associated with later high-output Saab two-strokes. More interesting than the carburetor count was the layout.
The drivetrain was arranged with the gearbox ahead of the engine, and the engine’s direction of rotation was reversed so the installation still provided the required forward gears. A two-stroke engine made that solution far more practical than it would have been with most conventional four-stroke designs.
The first Sonett originally had a three-speed transmission. It was subsequently modified to four speeds, with the gear selector relocated from the steering column to the sill area. Several years later Saab would pursue increasingly sophisticated production-based competition cars. One surviving example of where that philosophy eventually led can be seen in the Saab 96 Monte Carlo 850 competition car documented on SaabPlanet.
The first complete car was ready at 2 a.m.
The original Sonett was completed with its body fitted on October 14, 1955. Saab historical material places completion at around 2 a.m..
The chassis had already been tested, including discreet runs intended to keep attention away from the project. Once the complete car existed, Saab management chose not to reveal it immediately. Instead, the Sonett was held back for the Stockholm motor show. Its public appearance is unusually well documented. On March 15, 1956, during the press preview ahead of the Stockholms Bilsalong, Mellde brought the car into the exhibition. The show opened to the public on March 16.
The first Sonett carried Swedish registration P 14000, clearly visible in some of the best-known black-and-white photographs of the car at speed. Only weeks later, Saab sent the Sonett to the United States. It was shown in New York in April 1956 as Saab was introducing the 93 to the American market. Lars-Olov Olson accompanied the car.
The Saab Heritage Car Museum USA still presents the Sonett I as a central part of that early American Saab history.
The first Sonett was not originally white
The white Sonett with competition number 271 is now the visual reference for Sonett I, but that is not how No. 1 began. Historical Saab documentation records the first car as originally finished in a pale yellow shade. During its later life in the United States it was repainted white and received the red interior now associated with the car.
The 271 markings visible in later photographs add another layer to its history. In 1989, Erik Carlsson and navigator Torsten Åman drove Sonett No. 1 in the historic Mille Miglia. Those competition markings subsequently became part of the car’s familiar appearance at demonstrations and historic events.
Saab’s connection with the revived Italian event continued with other early two-stroke cars. SaabPlanet has previously documented a 1957 Saab 93A prepared for the Mille Miglia Storica, providing a useful comparison with the competition environment from which the original Sonett emerged.
What about the famous 210 km/h claim?
Period descriptions of the Sonett sometimes claimed a top speed of at least 210 km/h — about 130 mph. The number belongs in the Sonett story because it appeared in contemporary material, but it should not be confused with a independently documented production-car test result.
The Saab Heritage Car Museum USA, drawing on earlier Saab USA material, gives a projected figure of approximately 120 mph. Other historical references vary again. The strongest measured number came much later.
In September 1996, the original Sonett No. 1 returned to serious high-speed running with Erik Carlsson behind the wheel. The forty-year-old car recorded 159.4 km/h — 99.0 mph, setting a Swedish speed record in the class for cars up to 750 cc.
That figure is considerably more valuable historically than treating the 210 km/h publicity number as a measured fact.
Saab came surprisingly close to series production
The project did not end after the Stockholm and New York appearances. In November 1956, Mellde received authorization for another five test cars. The Åsaka operation was no longer sufficient, so construction was assigned to ASJ – Svenska Järnvägsverkstäderna in Linköping, with associated body work in Katrineholm. The five additional cars were completed during 1957.
Saab then seriously investigated production. During May 1957, the company considered having the Sonett manufactured by Jensen in Britain. That route was abandoned and ASJ became the more likely solution. By November, planning had reached the point where Saab was considering approximately 2,000 cars per year, at a rate of around 200 per month.
This matters because it places the Sonett well beyond the category of a one-off motor-show experiment. Saab had reached supplier discussions, manufacturing studies and projected annual volumes.
The project disappeared when the economic case weakened at almost exactly the same moment that competition regulations changed. Modified production cars could again fulfill Saab’s motorsport needs, removing much of the reason to manufacture a specialized two-seat sports car.
At the New York show in 1958, Saab instead presented the GT 750, extracting the required sporting performance from the existing Saab 93 architecture.
Six cars were built – and all six remain accounted for
Only six Sonett Super Sports were completed between 1955 and 1957. Remarkably, all six remain accounted for.
No. 1, the Stockholm show car, is preserved at the Saab Car Museum in Trollhättan. No. 5, the blue car, is also held there. Other examples entered private or American collections.
No. 4 followed the most complicated path. Saab engineer Sigvard Sörensson bought it in 1961 and later transformed the car into the closed Saab Facett coupe. After further changes and damage, the surviving car was eventually reconstructed back toward its original Sonett form.
The survival of the complete six-car run makes the Sonett unusual even among low-volume prototypes: Saab’s entire first sports-car program can still be traced chassis by chassis.
Sonett II did not simply continue the first car
The appearance of the Saab Sonett II roughly a decade later can make the first car look like the beginning of a straightforward model genealogy.
It was not.
Saab effectively restarted the sports-car question in the 1960s, evaluating different proposals including Sixten Sason’s Catherina and the MFI 13. The latter became the foundation for the production Sonett II.
The technical connection between Sonett I and Sonett II is therefore much weaker than the names suggest.
What survived was the underlying objective: combine Saab mechanical components with low weight and a body created for a more specialized purpose than the company’s sedans.
The Facebook post from Mad for Saab that brought the Sonett I back into discussion is a useful reason to revisit the car precisely because so much of its history has been compressed into a few familiar lines: built secretly in a barn, named from “Så nätt,” six produced, 210 km/h.
The documented version is considerably more specific.
There was a 71 kg riveted aluminum structure that only the first car received. There were five later cars with different construction. Saab seriously investigated production at 2,000 units per year. The famous name predates the finished sports car. The white No. 1 was originally another color. Its competition number 271 belongs to a Mille Miglia chapter three decades later. And its clearest recorded speed achievement came not in 1956, but in 1996, with Erik Carlsson driving a forty-year-old prototype to 159.4 km/h.
For a project that never made it past six cars, the Sonett Super Sport generated an unusually long engineering afterlife.
