Back on the Market, Under a New Dealer
A 1966 Saab Sonett II carrying chassis number 19 – one of the 28 pre-series cars built before regular production began – is for sale again. Ricond AB, a Swedish car dealership, has listed it on Blocket for 799,000 skr (roughly $82,000 at today’s exchange rate), and the Swedish car magazine carup.se has picked up the story under the headline “Selling Sweden’s most expensive Saab.”
SaabPlanet first covered this same car in November 2024, when it was listed by Kaiser Classic at 995,000 skr (roughly $102,600 at today’s rate). Eighteen months and a change of dealer later, the asking price has dropped by roughly 196,000 kr – just under 20 percent.
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What SaabPlanet Reported in 2024
In SaabPlanet’s original piece, Christian Jacobsson of Kaiser Classic described the car as number 19 of the 28 pre-series Sonett IIs built in 1966, said it had toured with rally driver Erik “Carlsson on the Roof” Carlsson including an appearance at a New York auto show, and traced it to a US car collection before its current owner brought it back to Sweden.
That 2024 coverage was careful to frame the price as conditional: at 995,000 SKR, the car had the potential to become the most expensive Saab ever sold in Sweden, if it sold near that number. As far as public listings show, it didn’t. The car is back on the market, under a different dealer, at a lower price.
Pre-Series, Not “Prototype”
In 2024, this car was described in headline shorthand as a prototype. Strictly speaking, chassis #19 is better understood as a pre-series or pre-production Sonett II, which is also the term used in the current Swedish listing. Saab built three hand-made prototypes and 25 further pre-production cars in 1966 ahead of the Sonett II’s Geneva and New York debuts – 28 cars in total, occupying chassis numbers 1 through 28. The true hand-built prototypes almost certainly sit at the very start of that run; chassis #19, well into the sequence, belongs with the later pre-production batch.
Chassis #19, Under the Skin
The specification is consistent with what a 1966 pre-series Sonett II should be, and matches what SaabPlanet reported in 2024: a longitudinally mounted 841cc three-cylinder two-stroke engine with a Solex 40 DHW triple carburetor on a shared throttle shaft, producing 60 DIN hp at 5,200 rpm, paired with a fully synchronized 4-speed column-shift gearbox with a freewheel. Curb weight is listed at 745 kg. The fiberglass body sits on a steel box-section chassis with coil springs front and rear and a 12-volt electrical system.
For scale: Saab built 258 two-stroke Sonett IIs in total before switching to the Ford V4 engine at chassis #259 in 1967. Chassis #19, from the original 1966 pre-series batch, predates the bulk of that production run by more than a year.
The current listing also states the car’s original 4-bolt, 15-inch steel wheels were rebuilt to a 5-bolt pattern ahead of a US appearance – a detail that doesn’t appear in SaabPlanet’s 2024 coverage and that has not been independently verified.
The car carries registration WWB786, first registered under that plate on 2 July 2018, and – as a vehicle built in 1966 – qualifies for Sweden’s periodic-inspection and vehicle-tax exemptions for vehicles over 30 years old.
The Carlsson Story, As the Seller Tells It
Both the Blocket listing and carup.se state that Erik Carlsson drove the car during a Saab promotional tour, that it was shipped to the US around New Year 1967 for a major New York auto show, and that it later appeared at American autocross and slalom events into the 1970s before ending up in a Massachusetts collection. Ricond AB’s Marcus Ivarsson, quoted by carup.se, called it an honor to be handling the sale of such a unique car.
It’s worth being precise about what that adds up to. The broad outline – a Sonett II used for period PR touring, including US exposure – is consistent with well-documented Saab marketing practices of the era, and the general history of the model’s own 1966 New York debut is well established. What isn’t independently documented, in either the 2024 or 2026 accounts, is Erik Carlsson behind the wheel of this specific chassis, as opposed to Sonett II promotional cars in general. Two dealers, eighteen months apart, have told a matching story – more consistency than pure invention would typically produce, but still short of independent confirmation.
Where the Superlative Claim Stands Now
carup.se’s framing revives language that first attached to this car in 2024, when it carried a 995,000 kr ask. That framing was conditional then, and the intervening year and a half hasn’t strengthened it: the car remains unsold at that number, and the current ask is lower still. SaabPlanet’s own 2024 reporting noted the actual benchmark – a 1987 Saab 900 Convertible that sold in the US for roughly 1.5 million SEK (about $154,600 at today’s rate) – a figure neither this car’s 2024 nor 2026 asking price comes close to.
For now, chassis #19 remains what it was in 2024: a genuinely rare pre-series Sonett II carrying a superlative it has yet to earn.
