Saab, which stands for Svenska Aeroplan AB, was founded in 1937 to make aircraft for the Swedish air force. After World War II, their military contracts stopped paying the bills, so Saab turned to automobiles instead. When early models proved quite capable in European road rallies, Saab decided to try producing sports cars. A prototype emerged in 1956, but it was plagued by problems. A full decade later, Saab revived the concept, creating 1966’s Saab Sonett II. The styling was sleek and squat, but the engine was an outdated two-cylinder. As a sports car, it met with very limited success, and was discontinued to make room for the next attempt. It still wasn’t much better performance-wise than the Sonett II, and Saab eventually abandoned the idea of sports cars altogether. In this article, you’ll learn more about what made these Saabs tick. With car profiles and pictures, you’ll find out that looks aren’t everything, along with a bit of Saab’s history.

The name SAAB stands for Svenska Aeroplan AB, which, as you might guess, was founded to build aircraft for the Swedish air force. That was in 1937. When military orders dried up in the wake of World War II, the firm decided to bolster its business with a very different product: automobiles. What emerged was a streamlined but dumpy-looking little fastback sedan with front-wheel drive (a postwar pioneer in this respect) and a German DKW-inspired two-stroke twin for power. It went on sale in 1949 as the Saab 92. (Like Porsche’s, Saab projects have numbers, be they cars or airplanes.) Later models had three-cylinder two-strokes, but remained two-door sedans or three-door station wagons. Not surprisingly, they began to do well in European rallying, so the idea of a sporting model wasn’t as far-fetched as it might have seemed. Saab’s first move in this direction was the Sonett I of 1956-57, a fiberglass-bodied two-seat roadster based on standard production components.

Only a handful were built though, all essentially prototypes, and the company wouldn’t try again until 10 years later. This second effort was somewhat more successful. Internally designated Saab 97 and sold as the Sonett II, it employed rather modest coupe bodywork, again of fiberglass, over the floorpan and running gear of the latest Saab 96 Monte Carlo sedan. That meant a 60-horsepower 841-cc two-stroke three, front drive, front disc brakes, and a 4-speed manual transaxle with Saab’s usual column-shift control. Styling was smooth if a bit odd, with a long, pointy front, prominent hood bulge, fixed compound-curve backlight, and abbreviated tail. The design came from Malmo Aircraft Industry (MFI), while bodies were initially built by the Swedish Railway Works (ASJ) in Arlov, many miles from any other Saab production facility. As on the Austin-Healey Sprite and Jaguar E-Type (see way to justify the cost of a completely new design. It might have made good technical sense to switch the sports car to the chassis of the then-new 99 sedan, but this wasn’t seriously considered. Most of the design work was done by Italian freelancer Sergio Coggiola (also well known to Swedish rival Volvo), with Saab’s own studio applying final touches.