eBay Escapade

The name Sonett has precisely zero connection with the fourteen-line poems Shakespeare was so adept at writing; those are sonnets. Instead, it comes from a Swedish slang expression: Så nätt den är, which I’m told translates more or less to mean “how neat it is.” And neat the little front-drive sportsters are. The first SAAB Sonett was a roadster of compelling curvaceousness. It debuted in 1956, and the trolls in Trollhättan built precisely half a dozen of them. 

In 1981 the CART/PPG Indy Car series was in its third year. Formed in 1979 by racing teams who had split from the previous sanctioning body, USAC, over how races were promoted, the way that television contracts were handled and what they believed to be the small size of the winners’ purses, the ‘81 PPG Indy Car World Series had 11 races on the schedule and featured drivers like Rick Mears, Johnny Rutherford and Mario Andretti. In time the series would go on to become the sole sanctioning body for all of Indy Car racing, but in 1981 the series was still in its infancy and, despite having Indy Car as a part of it name, did not even include the Indianapolis 500 among its officially sanctioned events.

It only had 65,000 miles. A 2002 Mazda Millenia—my personal favorite of the Japanese near-luxury cars of that era. I am an automotive enthusiast, but much like others here at TTAC, it’s not in the standard sense. I’m the kind of guy who gets a rise out of seeing a purple Suzuki X90 on the road. I would take an Alfa 159 over nearly any other car on the planet today (If I could get one in America), just because I want to park it in my driveway and lick it all over. I value cars with character, unique vehicles with stories behind them, cars that represent value, have faults, and ultimately are fun or interesting.

So now you may understand why the Millenia was my preferred pseudo luxury ride of the turn of the, uh, Millenium. Mazda built a car that had some of the trademarks of Japanese luxo-sedan comfort and quality, and true to form, made sure they paid homage to their own tradition of senseless eccentricity (Miller cycle V6), of course at the expense of reliability. But fear not…this car had character, low miles, a nice interior and was stupid cheap.