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Petrolicious keeps our love of the Saab Sonett aflame

German auto designs lean toward function and purpose. Italian designers deliver passion and beauty. The Brits, majesty. American cars, brashness and authority. If you want a funky design, though, you go to Sweden. The land of cheap, do-it-yourself furniture and delicious meatballs knows a thing or six about style and design, and while that character is only now reemerging thanks to a certain string of Volvo concepts, it use to be that Saab was the authority on penning some of the industry's more unique designs.
Take the beautiful Sonett for example - a small coupe whose appearance is a funky mishmash of a Porsche 911 and a Bugeyed Sprite with just a hint of a Citroën DS (it's that convex rear window). It's a positively striking car, made more unique by its two-stroke, three-cylinder powertrain and four-on-the-tree manual transmission. With just 70 horsepower hauling about 1,500 pounds of Swedish style, the Sonett strikes us as an ideal alternative to some of the English sports cars of its day, particularly for those that are looking for something beyond your average MG or Triumph.
For Glenn Roberts, the Sonett was a part of his childhood. His family owned example was originally a special-order item by his parents in 1967. He bought the car from them 13 years later and has never looked back, completing a restoration in 2004. With a story like that, it's not surprising that Roberts and his silver Sonett are the most recent pairing to get some attention from Petrolicious.

Nicolas Cage flogs Saab-based Senova from Beijing Auto [w/video]

BAIC has officially pulled the covers off of its new Senova D Series sedan for China. The four-door is based on the old Saab 9-5 and boasts a turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder engine. Local buyers can get their hands on the machine for around $22,745 at current conversion rates. Other engine options include a turbocharged 1.8-liter four cylinder as well as turbocharged 2.3-liter four-cylinder, and a wide range of safety equipment comes standard on every trim except the very base model. Those goodies include a tire pressure monitoring system, active head restraints, blind spot detection, driver fatigue detection and parking sensors.
The Senova nameplate serves every model based on former Saab architectures, including the Epsilon, GM2900 and GM2400 platforms as well as engine and transmission tech. In order to promote its new products, BAIC has hired Hollywood staple Nicolas Cage to serve as the company's brand ambassador. Cage stars in the Senova-heavy Town of Car Legends action-packed video short (directed by Olivier Megaton of Transporter 3 and Taken 2 fame) which you can view by scrolling below.

GM recalling 8.4M cars, 8.2M related to ignition problems

General Motors today announced a truly massive recall covering some 8.4 million vehicles in North America. Most significantly, 8.2 million examples of the affected vehicles are being called back due to "unintended ignition key rotation," though GM spokesperson Alan Adler tells Autoblog that this issue is not like the infamous Chevy Cobalt ignition switch fiasco.
For the sake of perspective, translated to US population, this total recall figure would equal a car for each resident of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, the District of Columbia, Vermont and Wyoming. Combined. Here's how it all breaks down:
7,610,862 vehicles in North America being recalled for unintended ignition key rotation. 6,805,679 are in the United States.